H2H, it wasn't pretty but hey - we medalled!

Although I have been in races with relays before, this was the first time I did not run all the legs myself. With all the partying required after the run I had to make sure I had something left in me!

The last couple of weeks training has been nearly non-existant. After my big time PR and win at the North Shore Half my legs have been stiff as can be. I went out to an interval workout with VFAC the Thursday after which was luckily changed to 2 X 3 miles. The first one was slow but within reason but the second was barely a jog. After that I decided to take some time off and rested until the Sunday, then went for a pretty casual 2 hour run on the North Shore after picking up my hardware and shoes at North Shore Athletics. I managed a decent easy run but was still tight as can be. Tuesday was my next run and I decided (probably foolheartedly) to do a tempo run on the Baden Powell. Things were not feeling well but I was flying like never before on that trail, even managing a 3:39 km on a flat portion. Since then my running had totally been in the crapper, and I had some pretty miserable runs and a lot of resting. The Thursday interval workout with H2H was agonising but at least my times were approaching normal.

The morning of H2H I was finally feeling reasonable although my expectations were much diminished as I had done no long runs and only the one very hilly tempo. I picked up Alex downtown and we began to make our way out to the start in Haney to cheer on our leg 1 runner Sophie. Things were going fine, if only because we had not spoken to anyone, until we arrived in Maple Ridge. We were about 10 minutes from the stage 2 start when we received a call from Sophie (I think - Alex spoke to someone and wasn't sure who it was). Sophie had finished her leg and our leg 2 runner, Monika, was not there. Alex was to run leg 2 now but we were still a few minutes away. I was quite suprised that Sophie had finished already as I had an older printed off spreadsheet from earlier in the week showing our start time as 7:00 (turns out it was 6:30). We arrived at stage 2 and went running looking for Sophie but couldn't see her anywhere, and couldn't reach anyone on Tim's cell. After searching around for a few minutes we gambled a guess that Tim, our team captain, decided to take over the leg as he was there. I was to run leg 3, which is a little over 15 km and hilly with more uphill than down, so we hoped we were right and headed off towards the 3rd exchange. We were relieved when we saw Tim running and got to the exchange with a reasonable amount of time.

We parked the car and headed up to the exchange and very shortly after Ernest from our master's team came in. I knew that Tim was not far behind him and they are a comparable speed so I had to warm up quick - again time was not on our side. I warmed up back towards him and saw him barely a couple of minutes later, so I turned around and headed back. With maybe 3-4 minutes warm up I waited there but I was not sure exactly how the exchange was going to work. I waited in the exchange area but somehow we had missed each other and I saw him wandering on the outside, obviously looking for me. I grabbed the timing chip and took off, the leg started with a relatively flat section before a series of hills. I passed several people here, although judging by the results they must have had an earlier start as we finished my leg one spot behind where we were.

A runner came up from behind named Bruce - a former 2:30 marathoner - and we ran alongside each other for most of the leg. My foot pod which is normally quite accurate was giving me some crazy readings saying some km's were as quick as 3:00 and I knew we weren't going that fast. I guess either having the timing chip right next to the watch was interfering with the wireless or the way I tied the foot pod on was allowing it to flop around. Anyway we passed many runners and chatted for a while until I developed a stitch. Unfortunately what breakfast was still left in my stomach was not happy staying there. I eventually made the call to duck off to the side of the road as I probably would have lost more time trying to run like that than I would lose with a quick pit stop. About 5 people passed me as I was in the bushes and I got back going again and made my best effort to catch back up to Bruce. With my sad few weeks of training I was definitely not at the top of my game though and although I managed to pass the people who passed me Bruce was still a good 200 metres ahead. Through the rest of the leg I closed the gap little by little but never quite managed to catch up and finished probably 100 metres behind him.

That is where the chaos continued. First I screwed up and ran past the tent where I was supposed to wave the timing chip. I looked around for some time for anyone from my team as I had no idea what was going on now. Was Monika taking over for me or did she even show up? It was after a while of this I realised that they were yelling from the exchange about the chip. I was so focused on finding whoever was doing the next leg not only did I forget to swipe it through I completely ignored the people who were trying to help me. I headed back and waved it through and still no sign of anyone. I started wandering around the crowd, feebly yelling "Monika, Monika!" Still no sign of anyone from VFAC let alone my relay team. Finally at the far end of the crowd I saw John, our coach. I ran over to ask if he knew what was going on and then noticed the person he was talking to was Monika. She was standing as far as possible from the exchange facing away from it, and she had a rain jacket on with the hood cinched tight around her face, it turned out there was a power outage in her area and her alarm didn't go off. She grabbed the chip and took off after a bit more sorting out what was going on with John.

She had a flight to be on at 11:00 at the Abbotsford airport, so she was not able to run all of leg 4. This meant Alex would have to take over and would be running most of leg 4 plus all of leg 5, as 4 legs had to be completed by females. Tim and Alex showed up just then and Ernest took Alex to meet Monika midway through stage 4. Tim and I went to a spot near the end of the leg and waited for Alex. She came through with a good effort and managed to pass her ex - which she was very pleased with. The exchange at the end of leg 4 was a total zoo with many cars parking and a lot of traffic at kind of a weird corner but we had to stop in to let them know of changes to the runners. Once done there, we headed to exchange 5. The weather took a turn for the much worse. I saw some friends from Club Fat Ass there, Gilles and John who were monitoring the ultra marathon and Gary and Jurgen who were running (and drinking) with the mulleted Chachie Brothers. Also a guy Dan who was in my training class at CMBC was hanging out with them. We had some time to relax there before Alex arrived in the frigid monsoon. She was quite a trooper and saved our asses, and was freezing until she got into some warm clothes. Ryan took over from her fairly smoothly and from there the chaos subsided.

It turned out pretty much as well as it could have. We could have easily had 2nd in the open mixed category but all of the mix ups put us about 10 minutes back of the second place team. First was the Phoenix team and we didn't really have a hope in hell against them anyway. On a day with so many excuses, third place was a great spot to land up in!!!