Finishing the Fall 50

On Saturday, I finished the Fall 50 as a member of a 5-person relay team.  Our group brought two teams paired approximately by pace so that we could all run our segments with a partner.  I ran one leg with my boyfriend (who could not, incidentally, "kill the hill" at the end of our leg--even though he's naturally a slightly faster runner than me, I wound up waiting for him at the top) and the other with Liz.  

Liz just recovered from an injury that involved a few months off from running, and she was nervous about joining our team again.  We met last year when Matt was injured--Liz became my default partner, and I was absolutely terrified about running with her: she has a high school and college track background, plus tons of age-group awards and fast races under her belt, and at that point, all I had accomplished since having my daughter 4 years earlier was bonking during one half marathon and finishing another. We ended up being an amazing team: we pushed each other and managed to run at a 7:45 pace across two of the hilliest legs of the route last year.  This year, despite her injury, we got our pace down to 7:25 for a challenging 4.1 mile leg.  Running with Liz, and talking to her about training, has given me much more focus and determination about training than I had before.  Where I used to measure my success by miles logged, now I find myself thinking of new ways to push my boundaries and challenge  myself.

Being able to pass at least eight people during our leg while running in tutus was pretty awesome.  I definitely had a girl power kind of race as I thought about how many people probably saw our outfits and thought we'd be too "girly" to work hard right before we powered up a hill. 

Next year, we're planning on running the race together as a two-woman team.  I haven't run a marathon (or at least, not one I'd like to remember: before my daughter was born, I ran/hobbled one through a stress fracture and another through serious diarrhea) and don't want to train for one, but 25 miles broken up by time in a van, proper hydration, and stretching seems more manageable while also sounding like an amazing challenge.