Race Report – 9/1/2006 – FILA Relays

The FILA Relays took place on Friday September 1st, and my trail running friends and I got together and formed a team, The Crazy 88’s. (you know, the bad guys from Kill Bill; except we wore ‘blood red’ instead of black)

The race consists of 4, two-and-a-half mile laps around Austin’s Zilker Park and Nature Center. Nedra, Amanda, Gordon and I came in to this just wanting to have a good time. The first leg was set for 6:30pm, so this was the first evening race all but Nedra, had ever run.

I ate a lot of food that day to ensure that I would not lack the energy to not only sit out in the sun beforehand, but race and finish strong. For breakfast I had my normal Nouriche yoghurt, as well as four cinammon toast pancake Eggo’s. At lunch, as is customary, I met the boys at Texadelphia for a Cheesesteak, fries and chips and queso. Come 4 o’clock I also had an energy bar (Cliff Bar). Yep, quite a bit of food… I thought so as well!!

I arrived at 5:15, well in time for our scheduled 5:30pm meeting time to sign waivers, get our timing chips as well as get a little warmup run in. We ran a mile and a quarter right around 5pm, to warm up the legs. It was hot as hell out on Friday. Easily over 100, if not into the 103 – 104 range.

Amanda signed the team up a few weeks ago, and our intent was to have a good time, and run decent times… but I’m personally too competitive in nature not to get out there and try my best, and I think my colleagues have the same inner fire burning as well! As team captain, Amanda decided the order. She would run first, followed by her husband Gordon, then Nedra, and I was assigned to run the anchor leg. The race start was delayed by about 20 minutes.

Amanda had told us her goal was to come in right around 18min 45sec, but she bested that by 34 seconds coming in at 18:11!! WOW!!
Gordon wanted to get in under 20mins, and he killed that goal… his time: 18:27!!! DOUBLE WOW!
Nedra and I had been standing in the relay chutes timing the laps, and thought she still had a good minute before we would expect to spot Gordon coming down the straighaway. But I happened to look out there, and low and behold, here comes “Uma” (we all wore red, and he wore yellow like Uma in Kill Bill) flying down the straight away! We were amazed by his time and Nedra took off in a hurry after Gordon’s amazing arrival.
Nedra kicked butt too. She wanted to get in around 17mins, and she came in at 16mins 11seconds!!!

I ate a Clif Shot GU when Nedra took off, and then it was now my turn. I had been standing around for so long, that I my legs were feeling heavy. REAL heavy. I wasn’t sure of the pace I was running, as there were no true markers on the course. My legs felt like rocks, and I was pretty sure I was going slower than needed. I had tracked The Course on Google Maps earlier in the day, so I knew kinda sorta where the 1 mile and 2 mile spots were.



My goal was to come in around 16 minutes, so I needed a 6min 30 first mile. I clocked in around 6:23 for Mile 1. It certainly did not feel like I had run that fast, but my legs were finally starting to feel normal. Mile two had a challenging but not deadly hill to it. All the hill workouts and trail running over the summer proved beneficial as I blew by many other racers that resorted to trotting up, or even walking.

Mile 2 came upon me pretty quickly, I clocked in at 6:34, a little slower than needed, but decent considering the hills. The last half mile was a gradual downhill, and I knew it would be fast, but not sure how fast. I spotted a guy about 30 yards ahead of me, and he was my rabbit to seek-and-destroy. I slowly added speed to my run, and as I approached the hard left turn back into the park area (see map above), I had caught and passed him.

This is where Marla was on the sideline cheering her ass off. She ran next to me with Eden on the grass, yelling all she could. (she ran an earlier leg with another team).

“MIKE!!! KICK KICK KICK!!!! GO GO GO!!! GO MIKE GO!!!”

As I turned the corner Nedra, Gordon and Amanda were all there cheering me on too. Wow, it’s amazing how helpful a few cheers are! I was totally pumped to finish strong!

I knew the guy I had passed was going to come back strong, it was just a matter of time. We were both in almost full sprint mode by now. I focused on another runner ahead of me, this time a considerably slower runner (probably the 3rd leg of a slow team) and caught and blew by her. I think she could hear me and my enemy coming up on her, because she turned her head and got out of our way to the right! Hahaha!
By this time I heard Trey on the sideline cheering me in too.

“GO GO GO GO GO MIIIIIIKE GO!”

I also heard others yelling as this was quite possibly the sprint/race of the night. We were sprinting for our lives, side by side. The guy took a very slight lead on me with about 30 yards to go. We were in an all out sprint, and I somehow knew he’d come hard at the end. He took that lead, but somehow I dug deep and found an even higher gear, and am pretty sure I past him right before the finish line and won by-a-nose. This sprint-off helped me run the last half mile in 2min 33 seconds, and finish in 15 mins 32 seconds; a full 28 seconds shy of my goal!!! YEAH!

Our team got 4th place in the mixed division, coming in at 1:08:22:90.
We were VERY happy with our times!

I personally was ecstatic with my time, and looked forward to seeing if the chip time correctly reflected my narrow victory. Saturday morning, I checked the updated results on the website:

TEAM Crazy 88’s - 1:08:22.90
TEAM Hazbenz - 1:08:23.00

SWEETNESS!!! I did in fact beat him... by a mere 0.10 seconds! YES!!!

(I can’t wait to see if the race photographers got some good pictures of the battle!)