New England Relay

Personally, I would consider running to be a solitary sport.  Running does not require more than one participant to be present during such an activity.  On race day, good or bad, the outcome is totally dependent on you.  There is no blaming another person for not making a shot, playing defense, catching the ball or loafing.  As a runner, you have no one to give credit or blame to except for yourself.  I have lived with this frame of mind for my entire running career.  I sign up for a race, no one cares.  I train for a marathon, no one cares.  At 5 am on a Sunday when it is freezing cold in winter, no one cares if I sleep in and skip my long run.  When I am sore and tired and feel like doing one less repeat for my speed work, no one will ever notice except for me.  Running is the simplest and most singular sport on the planet, or so it seemed until being asked to take part in a 223.5 mile relay race through 6 states in New England.

I had originally dedicated this blog to writing about my marathon adventures but I look back on this first relay race with nostalgia because of the fond memories I have from it.  I had been asked on Facebook by a friend, Mike Edenfield.  As I write this it should be noted that he passed away unexpectedly less than a year after this race.  I had never met a person with more of a zeal for life than him.  He was also on a similar journey as I am.  He wanted to run a race in every state regardless of the distance.  Mike had been over weight like I was and lost it all due to P90X and then fell in love with the sport of running.  I would have never volunteered to run this race except for the fact that it was him that had asked.  He was extremely driven but also the most sincere person I have ever come across.  He could look you in the eye and tell you that he loved you and you know that he really meant it.  This race turned out to be a 4 day adventure that I will forever look upon with the fondest of memories.

First off, if you are not familiar with a relay race such as this let me first explain some of the details.  Each team consists of 12 runners and 2 drivers.   We had 2 vans with 6 runners each.  The race is broken down into 36 consecutive legs ranging from 3 miles up to 12 miles.  Each runner will run approximately 3 legs of the race in succession, for example; runner #1 will run leg 1, 13 & 25 with the vans alternating groups every 6 legs of the race.  The race continues all night into the following day.  We started the race in Rhode Island and finished later the next day on the coast of Maine.

We had started the trip off by driving both vans from Tennessee all the way up to Rhode Island, we arrived a day before the race so most of us spent that extra day touring around New York City.  After the long day we went to our hotel in Rhode Island to get ready for race day.

We had a great crew of runners full of wonderful personalities and forged friendships that I believe will carry on for many years to come.  As far as running goes, we had a pretty mixed bag from seasoned veterans to beginners and everything in between.  Needless to say, I was pretty shocked when we were favored to possibly win this thing.  Another thing I failed to mention was that during the registration process, each runner submits the time of their last 10k so that they can stagger each team’s start time in order to have all of the teams finishing around the same time.  We were the last team to start.  What blows my mind is that we started around 3 o’clock in the afternoon and some of the other teams started around 6 a.m. in the morning.  (I should also add as a footnote that I had been dared to run the first leg in a running skirt)  For the first several legs of the relay, volunteers and course monitors were taking down and cleaning up the stations as they waited on us to come through since we were the last team.  Everyone’s first leg went off without a hitch; we were all excited and happily cheering as we embarked upon our little adventure all without ever seeing another runner.  By the time my second leg came around it was already past midnight and the relay was now in the mountains of Vermont and I must say it was extremely hilly.  To give some perspective, the race started near the coast (sea level), one of our relay stations was on top of a mountain at a ski resort.  My second leg was all uphill for about 6 miles in the dead of night.  The interesting thing about the relay race is the team dynamic that comes into play.  Normally I would have tried to walk on some of these hills but I kept remembering that there were 11 other people giving their best and I could nothing less than mine.  As I climbed the hill I could see a red flicker in the distance which turned out to be other teams running.  The feeling of running at night with no traffic in the middle of nowhere is a thing of beauty and this takes on a primal feeling when you are also able to focus on running down other teams.  This becomes sort of a predator / prey relationship.  Our team was faster and stronger which turned our relay into a hunt.  Each of our vans would paint a mark on the side for every person we patched, we used the term “road Kills”.  Each of our 2 vans began competing with one another to see who could get the most “kills”.  The race continued with no sleep for any of us into the morning sunrise as we were now progressing into New Hampshire. 

We were all exhausted by this time but we were kept awake with the new realization that now most of our final legs were going downhill and there were also plenty of other teams within our striking distance.  As each runner finished his or her final leg you could see that everyone had given their all.  Many of the runners we had to literally drag into the van to get to the next stop.  This was most evident in watching Mike’s final leg.  He was running on the Maine coastline with a nasty headwind.  His legs were driving hard but he was gaining almost no ground.  He had nothing left when he crossed the relay point and we even had to carry him to the van.  I was so proud because it was evident that we all ran hard but he ran the hardest.  Our van then made our way to the finish line to await our final runner crossing the finish line.  His name is Jeremy Sexton.  At the time Jeremy was new to running, and in the last 24 hours he had ran more miles than he ever had in a week.  A couple of us met him about a mile out and ran with him shouting out encouragement to not stop or quit until the finish.  He crossed the tape at the 27 hours 5 minutes and collapsed to the pavement in complete exhaustion.  We awaited the results to be tallied and our time was good enough for 2^nd place.  We were all proud of our accomplishment as we dined on Maine lobster at the finish line celebration before piling back in the van to start the long drive home.

Mike was right when he said that this would be an amazing experience.  If you ever get a chance to do a relay, do it!  The friendships and memories from this race sit as an all time high from anything that I have yet to experience.  Thanks a lot Mike!  I promised at his funeral to finish the 50 state marathon challenge in his memory and hope to do it with as much enthusiasm as him.