Blue Ridge Relay 2011

The Saga of the Lost Soles, Blue Ridge Relay, Sep. 9-10, 2011

I must start the story of how I wound up participating in the 2011 Blue Ridge Relay at the very beginning.  On a hot day in early July, I was standing in a pool of sweat in the parking lot of Off ‘N Running, having just finished a 20K “fun run” for charity with some of my Blueliner running buddies.  Lisa Watts and Bill Cooke were there, and I saw them chatting up several runners.  I innocently ambled over and listened in, and learned that Lisa and Bill were recruiting for a team of 12 folks to run in some relay race.  I remembered a few of our gang running it the previous year, hearing their stories over bagels at Panera Bread.  It sounded mildly interesting, but I hadn’t given it much thought since then.  I learned that Bill had a team with his son (who later had to drop out), two nieces, their friends, plus a few Blueliners.

Lisa turned to me and said, “How about it, Will?”

“How about what?” I replied cautiously.

“We need another runner for our team,” she said.

I’m always hesitant to commit to something without more information, and I must not have given Lisa a definite, positive enough refusal on the spot, because a day or two later, I got an email from her.  She said she hoped I might have an interest in joining the “Lost Soles”, their chosen team name (I later learned from Bill the original name was going to be the “Tormented Soles”, but he thought that might upset some of the churches along the relay route where the team would be stopping).  I kept a copy of the email, as I tend to do, and here is her direct quote, which turned out to be the understatement of the year:

“Not too much mileage but including some inclines.”

In retrospect, there was one ominous warning sign I should have heeded.  None of the Blueliners who had run the relay last year were willing to sign up again this year.

HOOKED

I admit I was intrigued by the idea, so needing more information, I googled “Blue Ridge Relay” to see what I could find out.  I’m not kidding - the first result was a link to a story from a mountain newspaper about a guy who ran in the relay a couple of years ago.  Apparently, this guy was finishing one of his legs, when he suddenly ran off the course, dashed into some house, grabbed a knife, and stabbed himself to death!  Reading this did not give me much confidence in how much fun it would be, but I think Bill’s response when I shared the article was what convinced me to join in.  

He wrote, “I'll admit to being exasperated from time to time with some of our teammates (my son and nieces) but never so much as to make life intolerable. There's always the option of killing them rather than killing yourself.”

I laughed so hard at that, I knew I was hooked.

THE TEAM

Fast forward a couple of months and our team of 12 was complete (or so we thought).  Bill’s son had to drop out, and there were several Blueliners who were “in” at one time or another, then “out”.  Bill and Lisa would make great used-car salesmen if their current careers don’t work out for some reason.  There are a lot of sore arms at the Blueline from their intense twisting.  Besides Bill, Lisa, and me, we had Robin, who is a physician’s assistant in High Point and the director of the GOFAR running program for elementary-age kids, Bobby, a sociable Georgia Tech grad who never complains, and Wes, who once lived in the mountains near where some of our route would go and whose approach to running is akin to Larry the Cable Guy (Get ‘er done!).  We also had Mike, an easy-going salesman in the chemical industry who travels quite a bit, Bill’s neighbor Colleen, a spunky mother of four and Irish dance teacher, and Jerrie, our unofficial photographer, who wrote on our team blog about why she was doing the relay, “I’m 57, it’s time to do this race.”  Bill’s two nieces, who were flying in from Portland, Oregon, to do the relay (and visit family, of course), are Laura, the 28-year old potter, and Christina, Laura’s big sister, who is a writer finishing grad school.  Rounding out the team was Ian, a friend of the nieces, who lives in Asheville and teaches high school math when he’s not off on some outdoor adventure.

Those of us who live in Greensboro had completed several training runs coordinated by Captain Bill.  We had run some hot, muggy miles around Battleground Park, which we consider hilly, and we had worked ourselves up to two whole repeats up the big hill on Old Battleground Road.  I thought I was surely ready, since after all, the relay was “not too much mileage and some inclines,” right?  

Then one night we met at Panera to finalize the plans and assign legs.  Bill had meticulously established a meeting agenda, from which we were not allowed to stray, and he had charted each leg of the relay, assigning a number to each set of three that someone would run, on a scale from 6 to 9, with more points awarded for how hard they were rated by the BRR race directors.  There were also two legs that were rated “MG Hard”, which I found out meant “Mountain Goat”.  We considered being mean and assigning all the “9” and “MG” legs to those who were not at the meeting.  But, martyr that I am, I volunteered to take one of the “9” positions, the slot assigned to runner number 12 of the rotation, which included two legs labeled “Very Hard” with one “Easy” leg in the middle.  I have to admit, my main motivation for being last was that I’d heard there was a YMCA at the finish line where we could shower, so I would only have two legs where I had to jump back in the van when I wasn’t at my freshest.

There were to be two vans, six runners in each, with runners 1-6 in the first van, and the rest in Van 2.  Wes and Colleen had shown themselves to be the strongest runners on our training runs, so Wes wound up in Van 1 in the number 2 slot.  He had the longest leg, which was 10 miles, labeled “Very Hard”, up Grandfather Mountain.  He also had to run 22 total miles for his three legs, the most of our team.  And he was at the meeting!  Colleen, who was not at the meeting, was designated the number 7 runner, which gave her an even more formidable final leg of 6.5 Mountain Goat miles, but “only” 16.2 total miles.  Mike, who coincidently was also not at the meeting, was assigned the other MG slot.

Again, Lisa described this event to me as “not too much mileage and some inclines.”

As it turned out, Bill’s hard work in setting up the team was not complete.  In the days before the race, emails started flying.  First we learned that Ian had an Achilles’ tendon problem, but he would probably make it.  Bill said no more injuries would be permitted, and Mike sent us a YouTube clip from “Caddyshack” where Rodney Dangerfield pretends his arm is broken.  Three days before the relay, Bill learned that Christina had hurt her ankle and probably couldn’t run.  She and Laura were flying to Greensboro, and she wanted to see how it felt once she landed, and maybe see a doctor.  But Bill didn’t want to take any chances, and once more, a mad scramble ensued to find a replacement.  At some point Lisa was even considering her auto mechanic, who had expressed an interest in the race, but it wasn’t clear if he was even a runner.  Maybe he was just being polite.  Robin scored a home run by soliciting help from some running friends in Jamestown, and Chris, a strong young IT manager who works at UNC-G, willingly jumped in at the last minute to take Christina’s number 6 slot.

The final lineup: Van 1 would have Robin leading off, followed by Wes, then Ian, Lisa, Laura, and finally Chris.

Van 2 had Colleen in the runner 7 slot, followed by Bobby, Mike, Captain Bill, Jerrie, and me.

THE NIGHT BEFORE

The Lost Soles were slotted to start the relay on a Friday morning at 7:30, so it was decided that Van 1 would travel to West Jefferson, NC, on Thursday night, and stay at a house owned by a friend of Lisa.  Bill’s brother Barden and Barden’s wife Terri (Christina and Laura’s parents) graciously hosted a pot-luck dinner Thursday evening at their home in Greensboro.  Finally, after many emails and blog postings, we all got to meet each other face-to-face!  (Except we were missing Ian, who hadn’t arrived yet from Asheville).  At the dinner, Robin passed out GOFAR running shirts to each team member, and Laura handed out beautiful pottery mugs she had made with the Lost Soles team name and logo.  Happily, Christina said that her ankle was feeling pretty good, and that she would go along as a designated driver of Van 1, while accompanying some of the other women on a few legs, especially those in the middle of the night.

After dinner, it was time to pack the vans (still missing Ian).  One of the brilliant tips that Lisa and Bill had picked up from a BRR veteran was to purchase individual plastic tubs (Lisa made it clear they were tubs, not bins), with a lid.  The idea was to pre-pack your three sets of running clothes in zip-lock baggies, then put the baggies in your tub.  That would save a lot of scrounging around in the van when it is your turn to run, trying to find your clothes.  After you run, you are to put your wet clothes back in the baggie and seal it up tight, to avoid sharing the aroma with the rest of the van.  Lisa had painstakingly labeled the tubs (not bins) with each runner’s name and slot.  She gave a rousing demonstration of the whole tub/baggie process, for which she received lots of accolades and never any teasing.

Ian finally pulled in, and after some group picture-taking and good-byes, Van 1 left for West Jefferson, and the members of Van 2 went home to their own beds, to get what they hoped would be enough sleep to last them through most of the next two days.

Note: Most of the rest of my saga will only be told from a Van 2 perspective.  When you have a team of 12, you spend the vast majority of your time with your six members, and you only see the other van at the major exchanges after every six legs.  Since Van 1 had all the writers and teachers (Mike joked that they were the Democrat van, and Van 2 was the Republican van), I am sure at least one of them will produce a much more eloquent and interesting story of their experiences.  In fact, Lisa had an account on her blog posted before the weekend was over!  I promise to try not to steal any of her words.

Update: I told you Van 1 would be writing - here is Chris' blog as well.

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

On Friday morning, Van 2 left Greensboro and arrived at Exchange Zone 6 (EZ 6) in West Jefferson with a couple of hours to spare.  The first van had begun the relay at Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia, and we had heard very little from them on their progress.  We soon learned that cell phone coverage was spotty at best in some places, although Colleen’s kids seemed to have no problem reaching her!  We parked next to a wildly decorated van with “Road Kilt” sprayed all over it, with stuffed animals (I think they were fake) hanging out the windows.  The Road Kilt team was a super nice group from Raleigh, who put on kilts after running their legs (not during the runs, which would have been much more effective, we thought).  I hope they won something at the finish for originality or decorations.  

When you do a relay like BRR, you wind up seeing the same folks over and over at the various exchanges.  With a few exceptions, they were all friendly and just out to have a good time with friends, like we were.  We started to refer to some by their nicknames:

“I almost caught the cast-girl” (she had her arm in a cast).

“There’s heavy-makeup girl again.”

“The Goats aren’t very friendly.”

We spent time studying Bill’s “bible” of race information, rules, maps, and leg profiles.  We jokingly compared each other’s legs, seeing who had the most purple on their routes (purple indicated the steepest climbs).  Also, Lisa had printed out and laminated individual cue sheets for each one of our legs, and Colleen noted on hers that it ended with an “EZ 7”.  She wondered aloud what that meant – was her leg going to be an easy 7-miler?  We all got a good laugh when we realized it stood for “Exchange Zone” 7.  All of our legs were going to be “EZ” at the end!

We broke out some of the food we brought, originally excited to be eating bagels with peanut butter, apples, and Power Bars, washed down with water and Gatorade from our squirt bottles.  After what seemed like a long time spent parked in the pleasant mountain sunshine in that grassy field beside a Christmas tree farm, Van 1 showed up, and we immediately enlisted Laura’s artistic abilities to decorate our van windows with car chalk, as we didn’t want to be the only unmarked team vehicle!  Colleen got ready to run, and finally we spotted Chris, flying down the road at a breakneck pace.  Apparently somebody forgot to tell him that we weren’t trying to win this race!  Colleen quickly learned to stand off to the side a little whenever Chris handed the relay bracelet to her, lest she be bowled over by his enthusiasm.

When Colleen left, we learned that EZ 6 was only a few minutes away from the house the Van 1 group had slept in the previous night.  Jealously we listened to them talk of their plans to go back to the house, take showers, lounge around, maybe eat breakfast somewhere, and do laundry!  All while us Van 2 runners would be out in the heat, pounding out the hills and the miles for our team.  Here's Wes demonstrating:

Lisa quickly reminded us which team members had been able to sleep in their own beds the night before, and we had to call it even.  We drove off along Colleen’s route to get to the next exchange zone before her.  We passed her and other runners along the way, and we waved and yelled encouragement to all of them (at least for a while).

The first set of legs progressed.  Before the race, I had found a spreadsheet where you could enter the distance of each leg and your per-mile pace, and it would calculate the projected finish time of each leg.  I entered an aggressive (I thought) 8:45 pace for everyone, just to give each van an idea of when we might be at each transition point, at the earliest.  Well, this team of “non-competitive” runners immediately started out under 8:45 pace, so that we were 10 to 20 minutes ahead of schedule at the transitions.  It became a bit of a mind game to try to figure out exactly how long each runner would take to finish their leg, and when the next runner needed to be ready to run.  One difficult part of running the relay was trying to time our eating, stretching, potty breaks, and dressing just right, so we wouldn’t be caught off guard when it was our turn to run.

When the time came for Captain Bill to run his first leg at about 2:30 PM Friday, he jokingly requested that when we passed him in the van, he wanted us to salute him.  We had many humorous suggestions as to what that salute might entail:

“Bill, you’re number one (middle finger)!”

“Bill, watch out for the full moon!”

We settled on stopping the van just ahead of him, and lining up in a row outside the van to give him a proper military greeting.  I think he noticed, but he was already huffing pretty hard.  Looking back at the picture, I don’t see Mike – I wonder if he was asleep?  

We made a game of counting off in the van when we were leaving each exchange zone:

“Seven…eight…nine…….”

“Where’s ten?”

“Oh, he’s running!”

Okay, it seemed funnier at the time for some reason; I guess you had to be there.

MY FIRST LEG

I’ll describe my first leg, because I just know you’ve been dying to hear about it.  I remembered to stretch out beforehand using my foam roller, thankfully, while waiting for Jerrie to finish leg 11.  I had to wear a reflective vest, as did Jerrie, because our legs were on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Oddly, in the Blue Ridge Relay, only three legs are actually on the Parkway itself.  The rules say to wear a vest on the Parkway, and at all times during the night legs, and we obeyed all rules!  My leg started on a slight downhill, but after crossing a bridge, for approximately the next 5 miles I was running up a steady incline with almost no break.  I passed a sign that said “Aho Gap – the crest of the Blue Ridge”, and I thought, “Great, the crest, that means the top, right?”  Wrong!  That appropriately named Aho Gap was just the beginning of more climbing!  Finally, the “incline” as Lisa would have called it leveled off, and I had some downhill, right before exiting the Parkway and running up the shoulder of busy Hwy 221/321 into Blowing Rock.  Friday evening, rush hour, in the tourism mecca of Blowing Rock, and I’m supposed to run on the right-hand shoulder of a busy highway, on a gravel-filled strip about two feet wide!  But I’m not complaining!

Luckily, I survived the run, only to find that EZ 13 was in the busy parking lot of the Tanger Outlet Mall.  Now I knew where all those cars were headed!  I weaved through the traffic, with BRR officials telling me which way to turn, and finally found Robin.  The picture that somebody took was priceless, as I’m holding out the bracelet to her, and I can remember yelling “Take this thing!”  Jerrie told me where there was a nice bathroom (yay – no porta-john!), and I felt much better after changing clothes and drinking a cold Mountain Dew.

WHERE’S THE FOOD?

While waiting for Bobby to purchase some extra gadget or phone converter at the Verizon Wireless store, because he only had about six things already plugged into the cigarette lighters, we discussed what to do for dinner, as we had maybe 5 hours until the next time we would meet Van 1.  Bill suggested we drive on to EZ 18, which was at some church, as they were supposed to be selling sandwiches.  Well, we drove for what seemed like forever, passing by Grandfather Mountain (“Good luck with that, Wes!”) until we finally found the church.  It was literally in the middle of nowhere.  Our first inkling of trouble was that we were only the second van to get there, which was odd.  At least that meant clean porta-potties!  We approached a woman who seemed official, and she said the food thing didn’t work out, there were no sandwiches, and the nearest town was quite a ways off.  We gave Bill some good-natured (in our opinion) ribbing, and agreed to make do with what we had.  We spread out blankets and sleeping bags in a field in front of the church, and had a less-than-enthusiastic picnic of leftover bagels, pretzels, apples, and peanut butter, again washed down with water and Gatorade from our squirt bottles.  

When I say less than enthusiastic, I mean that we were not enthusiastic about the food.  But at no time did anyone lose it, or gripe in a mean way, or complain.  We had such an awesome group, and we took everything in stride.  We ate, we laughed, we called home to loved ones, and eventually we lay down and tried to grab some sleep.  The positives: the almost-full moon, silhouetting the dark mountain ridges around us; the bright stars in the clear sky above; the deliciously crisp mountain air; the crickets and cicadas singing ceaselessly; and the comradery of all the runners on our team and others.  The negatives: those stupid dogs at the nearby house that barked for about two hours straight; the headlights from each van pulling into the church, piercing the dark night each time, seemingly right in my eyes; the mosquitos that kept finding my ear when I left it exposed outside the sleeping bag; and the hard ground that kept getting wetter and wetter from the dew.  The negatives won out, and I was unable to fall asleep.  Although Mike went into the van and reportedly slept like a baby.

 

NIGHTTIME RUNNING

Sometime after 10:00 PM, some of us were standing in front of our van when Ian walked up out of the dark night, saying, “There you are.”  It was a dreamlike scene (although I was definitely not asleep!), with all the runners walking around wearing their high-powered headlamps.  The church parking lot and lawn were now very crowded with vans and coal-miner-looking people and lifeless lumps that represented somebody getting more sleep than me, and Ian happened to walk right up to us.  The BRR rules state that when running at night, each runner must have a reflective vest, a flashing light on the front and another in back, and either a headlamp or a flashlight.  I rarely run in the dark (okay never), so I had to borrow most of the gear I wore that night.  

Vans 1 and 2 (those who were awake anyway) had a brief reunion, and soon Van 2 was back on the course.  Colleen had a short and sweet 4.3-miler, and something cool happened at a small fire station while we were waiting for her to finish.  An official-looking guy approached us, asking, “Are you the Lost Soles?”  I suppose he had seen our van and knew we were there somewhere.  He scared us when he started off saying, “One of your female runners..”  We just knew something had happened to Colleen or someone from Van 1.  But he smiled and continued, “She let me borrow this car chalk pen back at the start, and I wanted to return it to you.”  Wow, talk about relief, and amazement that this guy had sought us out in the dark to return a cheap pen he had borrowed.  There are still good people in this world!

 

BOBBY’S NIGHTMARE

Then it was time for Bobby’s leg.  Remember how I said we would drop a runner off, and then drive their route ahead of them to the next TZ?  Well, as we were driving Bobby’s 7.5-mile “Very Hard” route ahead of him, up seemingly impossible zigzagging hills, we at first kept saying “Poor Bobby!” and “Wow!” and nervously laughing  Eventually we just sat in stunned silence as the road just kept going up and up.  It was after 11:00 PM when he started, and this residential mountain road was ridiculously dark (and did I mention steep?).  “How is this not a Mountain Goat leg?” we wondered.  When we got to the TZ, appropriately next to a cemetery, every runner that finished had some new colorful language to describe the hell they had just been through.  We said, “Okay, Bobby’s gonna finally lose it, we might even get to hear him cuss!”  But of course, he didn’t.  He finished, smiled, and said something like “That was a little tough.”  And that was it.

 

BAKED POTATOES

We went through the rest of our night rotation, and again as number 12, we got to stop after I finished my leg, which was a 3.2-mile gentle downhill screamer of a run.  My run ended at a very popular spot, a fire station that was selling baked potatoes with all the fixings.  By this time, Mike was asleep again in the van, and I think Colleen might have been as well, although she says she didn’t sleep the whole time; she was just resting her eyes (and snoring).  Bill, Bobby and I were standing behind the van, discussing what to do next.  Bill seemed really keen to go and get a baked potato.  But he didn’t want to go alone.  Bobby said that since it was close to 3:00 AM by now, it was closer to time for breakfast food, which a baked potato is definitely not.  At our next stop, which was TZ 30, they were supposed to have pancakes, and Bobby wanted to hold out for breakfast.  This went on for quite a while.  I think Mike might have even woken up briefly, because the next morning he said all he remembered about the night after his run was somebody talking about baked potatoes – and thinking would somebody please get Bill a baked potato so we would shut up about it!  In the end, Bobby prevailed, and we loaded up the van and drove off into the night.  Thereafter, we wouldn’t let Bill live down his desire for a baked potato.  We joked the rest of the time that we needed to get Bill back to the fire station so he could get him a baked potato.  Again, I guess you had to be there; trust me, it was funny (to all of us but Bill, I think).  By the way, Van1 did get baked potatoes, and several of them got upset tummies as a result.

3:45 AM.  The van was a little low on gas, and Wes had told Mr. Potato Head (I mean, Bill) about a gas station that is open all night.  We pulled in, and we noticed that it was a combination gas station, convenience store, and Laundromat (of course!).  There were two police cars parked outside, but they didn’t seem too excited about anything.  Then we saw a car with four kids in it, out horsing around, and none of them looked much older than about 14.  What were these kids doing out at quarter to four in the morning, on a Saturday?  That’s it, nothing happened, I just wanted to give you a little flavor of what passed for entertainment for us that night.  The policemen ignored the kids, like it was an everyday occurrence to them.  Mike Van Winkle swears he doesn’t believe we stopped for gas, but I think he might have been asleep.

 

STILL NOT SLEEPING

At about 4:00 AM, we pulled into the grassy field beside a small Baptist church.  Bill, Bobby, and I grabbed our sleeping bags and headed into the church, one of the few that was actually open along our whole relay route.  Sleeping bags with inert runners were strewn everywhere – in the pews, behind the altar, and all along the floor.  I figured I would have trouble sleeping in that snore-a-torium, and I was about to head back to the van when I spotted a narrow staircase leading to a second floor.  I crept up the stairs, and found myself in a dark room, with more sleeping bags full of passed-out runners.  Suddenly I spotted a small room off to the side, with an open bit of floor behind a counter of some sort.  Here there was a linoleum floor, but at that point I didn’t care.  I stretched out in my sleeping bag, being careful to make as little noise as possible, as I didn’t want to wake anybody up.  I soon realized I was next to a refrigerator, which made some noise as it cycled on and off, but not too bad.  Alas, it was not to be.  As tired as I was, I still couldn’t quite get over the hump and into dreamland.  I was close, but then somebody came up and needed to get into the refrigerator, and then somebody’s cell phone went off (several different times), and then somebody else came up looking for a spot to stretch out and accidentally kicked my leg, and somebody in the next room snored blissfully.  Eventually the leading runners came through, and I lay fascinated as I watched the lights from their headlamps come through a window and bounce along the ceiling.  The sounds and smells of somebody cooking breakfast convinced me that it was time to give up on sleeping, and I found the rest of the gang downstairs and ate pancakes, sausage, and mixed fruit (definitely breakfast food).

ON OUR LAST LEGS

Mike had this orange blanket that said “Jesús me ama” on it (or was it Colleen’s?).  It got passed around so much I’m not sure whose it was. That phrase became another inside joke for Van 2, and as we looked in the “bible” at the profiles for our final legs, we jokingly said that maybe Jesus didn’t love us this morning.  

Colleen was to kick off the morning with her 6.5-mile Mountain Goat climb up an “incline” from about 2800 feet to over 4200 feet in elevation.  Then Bobby got to run down the other side of Colleen’s “incline” for 9.4 miles on a mostly gravel road.  Not to be outdone, Mike got the next Mountain Goat leg, a climb that one reviewer called the “Trail of Tears”, plus a steep descent.  I’m not saying Mike was nervous, but before his run he did show me how to reach his wife on his cell phone speed dial, just in case.  Bill and Jerrie each had 4+ mile runs (Moderate and Hard, respectively). Jerrie wanted to try the Galloway run/walk method, but she kept calling it the “Gallagher” method.  No word on whether that method entails carrying the “Sledge-O-Matic” with you on your run and searching out watermelons to crush. 

On my last run, the final leg of the relay, I had about a mile and a half climb, then a steep five-mile descent to the finish in downtown Asheville.  It was a glorious feeling to see the crowd gathered at the finish, and to see the rest of the Lost Soles waiting to cross the line with me.  There’s one picture showing Bill chasing behind me, trying in vain to give me my blue GOFAR shirt, but all I wanted to do was finish so I could stop running!  By the way, our team finished at almost exactly the 8:45 pace I had so brashly predicted.

The rest of the story is tame.  We all showered (of course Van 1 had showered hours before us), and we ate pizza (real food, finally).  Several runners got the cold beer they had craved for so long.  We re-packed the vans, to allow Bill, Laura, and Christina to stay in Asheville an extra day with Barden, Terri, and Ian.  The rest of us headed home, stopping along the way to wash the Lost Soles logos off the van windows.  We might have washed the van, but we couldn’t remove the memories that were made on the trip (this is where I get a little sentimental).

It is several days now after the relay, and most of us are back at home with family.   Back to work again.  The muscle soreness is fading, pictures and emails are flying around, and all of us are joking about next year.  Whether we do it again or not, none of the Lost Soles will soon forget the experience of the 2011 Blue Ridge Relay.  Thanks go to Captain Bill for his meticulous planning and attention to detail, and his never-ending quest to put the team together.  Most of all, I hope he gets to eat as many baked potatoes as he can possibly ever want!  And Lisa, if there is a next year, let’s practice some more of those “inclines”!