or the race that almost wasn't....

When DaveinAA pulled up lame after his mile race, I had mixed emotions. Having him anchor the relay was out of the question and I felt just sock for him, but I still wanted to run. Rochrunner had taken the afternoon off and driven an hour to AA, I was missing the premier of Disney's High School Musical 2, Tim Looney had probably canceled a 30 mile training run, all for naught? The race was saved when we pulled a ringer named Stefan out of the crowd.

We headed for our lane assignments and Team Boomer drew lane 4. Lane 1 looked to hold our closest competition: 3 girls and a boyfriend, all about 17, some of which had run the 5k 20 minutes earlier. Lanes 2 and 3 had young, long legged bucks that would obviously battle each other for the win. I had been assigned the first leg, I guess based on theory that my teammates could clean up the mess I made of the first lap.

If you go to the track, you see markings in every color of the rainbow around nearly the entire track. We had quite a discussion about where the first hand off would be and where the second and third would be. I realized that I might have the easiest job of all -- one hand off -- if I could find the start for the 3 turn stagger!

Without looking too silly, I found the line, checked that I actually had a baton and got into what can only be described as the 4 hour marathoner's crouch. Funny, I would be done far quicker that it normally takes me to cross the starting line.

The gun went off and so did I. I'm pretty sure I ran like ****. I don't have the same second by second recall that other sprinters do. I know I was sucking wind on the backstretch and was passed by the guys in lanes 2 and 3. I had three goals at that point: not get passed by lane 1, power through the impending flood of of lactic acid and not drop the baton handing it to rochrunner.

By some miracle I accomplished all three, and it was with great relief that I handed the baton off to my teammate rochrunner....

[to be continued" target="_blank">
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http://This message has been edited by MarkGuy (edited Aug-19-2007).