I'm retired from racing. Really.

I have already read a few of the entries for the race from my teammates, and recommend reading them.  Paul's has more of a general overview and is rather humorous.  I recommend it.  Here is my report.

A group of us drove down Thursday night/Friday morning.  We met the rest of the team at the starting line in Wickenburg.  I was the last runner (runner 6) in van 1.  The race started well, with it quickly becoming apparent that our competition would be from the Google team.  The five runners in front of me ran great, though Google did manage to open up about a 4-5 minute lead on us.  After making my ritual 20 trips to the beloved port-o-podies (or so it seemed), my leg approached.  My first run started about 8:30 pm.  It was a short leg- 4.4 miles, though it was hilly the whole way.  I had not trained near as much as I should have (only 10 weeks of running), so my overall predicted pace was 7:00 miles, though this leg was supposed to be a 7:18 thanks to the hills.  I didn't like running along the highway for the first bit, but having a full moon was great.  I hit my first turn (1.4 miles) at 6:45 pace and was feeling good, though I knew I was (sadly) near my speed limit since my breathing kept trying to turn random and I had to force it to stay even (2 steps in, 2 steps out).  I then had a gradual uphill, gradual downhill, then somewhat steep uphill.  The second hill slowed me a bit, but not too much.  I finished with a nice downhill run and a time of approximately 30:30, 2 minutes faster than predicted but we were still 4 or 5 minutes behind Google.

We drove the exchange 12, where I took a very cold but wonderful shower and fell asleep for about 2 hours on a wrestling mat.  Having always been the 1st runner in my previous vans, I prefer being last so I can sleep longer.  Results continue on Saturday.