Dances With Dirt

Wow. What a weekend. As I elluded to on Thursday, this past weekend I headed out to Southwest Michigan for Dances with Dirt, which is a 5 team 60 mile relay race over the hills, through the streams, and in the mud. Our team is usually pretty competitive and we were hoping for more of the same this weekend. Unfortunately, I made sure pretty early on that that wasn't going to happen.

My legs for the relay race were legs 2, 7, & 15, with the thinking that we put our two fastest runners first and second to try and get out ahead of the pack so we could focus on running and not navigating bodies for the rest of the day. Good theory, right? Not today. Our first runner Christian, took off on leg1 and was running in 12th place(there are about 350 teams in the race), but then he followed some people off course and he got a lost for about 10-15 minutes. That's part of DWD. You're following ribbons the whole way, and it's very easy to go off-course. He eventually figured it out and tagged off to me for leg 2. I took off like a bat out of hell and was just focusing on passing as many people as I could in the early miles of the 6.2 mile leg. I knew eventually we'd hit a single track path and passing would become much more difficult so it was important to run hard early. Unfortunately, while I was busy passing people, I failed to follow rule #1 of Dances with Dirt….Never blindly follow the pack.

Somehow, we got veered off track and would up on leg 15 instead of leg 2. Too compound the mistake, leg 15 was also marked with white ribbons so we had no idea we were going the wrong way, until we came up on the exchange point for leg 14 (we basically ran leg 15 backwards). At this point, there were probably 75 people, all confused and mulling about at the exchange point, trying to figure out what to do. I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed, so I just turned around and took off back from where I came. I reran the entire leg 15 (a 4.1 mile leg), and then started the course over. This time, I rather easily found the correct trail that I was supposed to be on.

So at this point, I was already on mile 10, of what was supposed to be a 6.2 mile leg (I had also gotten lost running leg 15 backwards which cost me another 2 miles). I was pretty beat, but what could I possibly do, but just keep running. I have no idea of pace or anything, but I know that I had nothing left when I finally came to the exchange for leg 3. The team acted like they were mostly concerned for my safety and all that, but I'll admit, I was deeply disappointed. Here we were, two legs into what was supposed to be a competitive day for us, and we were already done. It's kind of easy to deal with something like that when you only let yourself down, but when you have 4 other runners counting on you, it really does suck.

The rest of the team continued to run hard, and I was due up to run leg 7 next. Leg 7 was probably my toughest run of the day as it was 5 miles in length, and had some serious mud and water crossing to deal with. I wasn't sure what I had left after running 16 miles on leg 2, but once I took off and the legs started moving again, things seemed to fall into place pretty good. I had a blast on this leg. The last time I ran this leg was two years ago, and I had missed a turn and lost about 15 minutes. This year, I ran the leg about as good as I could have possibly ran, and passed many many runners. The leg starts with about 3 miles on a single track path and then you make the turn and go through about a mile of muck, water, and mud. I came out of it with mud up to my waste and all over my arms, from trying crawl out of the mudpits. After you escape from the mud section, you have about another mile on a nice limestone path. I tried to really push it on this section, but as soon as I started to find a rhythm, I was greeted with a nasty calf cramp. I tried to run through it, but it was pretty crippling. I stopped and tried to massage it, but all I could feel was a rock hard ball in my calf. Massaging it made it worse. So I continued to run and actually was able to keep a pretty good pace as I ran through it. It eventually loosened up and I was able to finish the leg.

After running a good hard leg like this, I felt a lot better. Our team was slowly climbing back into the middle of the pack and most importantly, we were having fun. My last leg was leg 15, the anchor leg. I expected this leg to be a triumphant victory lap for our team, but unfortunately, because of my screw-up, it turned into just another leg. I decided that I wanted to make myself hurt on this leg and I was hoping to average a 6 minute pace for the hilly 4.1 miles. I've run this leg a few times and my fastest average pace for it was 6:53. While I wasn't able to swing 6 minute this time around, I was able to be in the 6:20-6:30 range. I can't be more specific than that, because I forgot to hit my watch right when I took off. My time was 25:30 for the 4.1 mile jaunt, plus about 30-60 seconds when I forgot to hit the watch. Having run leg 15 twice earlier in the day, I knew it like the back of my hand this time around. I guess that was advantage, although, I certainly wasn't thinking that way while I was out there. At this point, my entire body was numb and I was running on fumes, but I also felt like I could run forever. I was at the point of complete exhaustion, but I was also at the point, where my legs couldn't run fast enough to really make me hurt.

So for the day, I ran 25 miles, most of them hard, and had mostly fun doing it. I'm so proud of the way that our team battled back from my screw-up to finish respectable. They picked me up when I needed it and I hope to return the favor next year. For any of you who have never done a team relay, let me just say that you should try it. There is nothing that can re-energize your spirit for running like battling with other runners for a day. I had an absolute blast.

Yesterday, I tried to run an easy 5 miler on the treadmill while the kids were sleeping and I couldn't even make it past a quarter mile. My legs were absolutely shot. It felt like someone was wacking my quads with a hammer every time my foot hit the ground. Normally after every DWD I can expect to be pretty sore for the week that follows..similiar to a marathon. This time around, I was thinking that since I'm in the best shape I've ever been in, I should be able to recover quickly. Of course that was assuming I would be running 15 miles, not 25. It will be interesting to see how long the soreness drags on. I did manage 8 miles this morning, but again, it hurt. Not a bad hurt though. A good hurt. The kind of hurt that you only get when you push yourself to limit, and survive.