Quick recap of Ocean to Sound race.
Sunday morning, at 5:15, I hit the alarm, ate, got on the road by 5:35 before the sun was up, and met the team at the Sayville Running Company to carpool to the start of Ocean to Sound. It’s a relay race composed of 8 legs, ranging in distance between 5.7 and 7 miles. This was my first team race in a long time, and was excited beyond measure for it. There is something so much more fun running with a team than solo. Anyways, layout pretty much went, in order of legs, Nehr, Mike, B, Beach, Soultan, Holl, me, and Adam on anchor. I had a long time to wait until I ran, as my leg started ~36 miles in. So anyways, here is the brief recap of the race…
Lynbrook showed up (made up of also, a bunch of solid ex-college runners. We are deeper, but their top are better than ours). Their lead off is their best, Dan Mcgrath, a mid 2:20’s marathoner. Nehr did great though, kept us within 30 seconds. Next two legs for us, we put in a good lead, because this is where they put in their weakest (our weakest were legs 4 and 5). Going into 4 we had built almost a 6 minute lead, which evaporated to 1:30ish by leg 6. Holl is one of our strong runners, but they put on a really really good guy there, and our lead turned into ~20 second deficit by leg 7. I was behind and nervous as fuck, as I didn’t want to be the one to blow it.
Leg 7 is a hilly leg, and also the longest. I take off hard, and by about a mile close to within 10 seconds. We take a turn up a steeeep hill and all the wheels come off. About 300 meters up… Brendan has driven up the hill and is yelling we need to turn around… we went the wrong way. Lynbrook’s guy (Shaun Mcgrath) was a little under 10 second in front of me at that point, and I waited for him to pass me again, and offered to spot him 10 seconds, he turned it down (I think most would, but I had to ask anyways). We get back down, and start the grind up the main hill of the leg, decently steep, about a mile long. Shaun sticks with me up it, and a bit after the crest. Some point by 2.5 in, he has lost contact though, I don’t really know. At this point I was running with the fear of god in me, worried of ruining our leg, and just moving the best I could. I clicked off some decent middle miles, until about 4.5 in, when long straights started. I was still rolling until about 5 decently, and then at like 6ish, steep steep uphill number two… And I was crawling. Anyways, after that hauled it in the straight to the finish, 7 miles in (with 600-700 extra) in 41:29. Finally got a measure of the gap. 2:05 I had put on him for a total of a 2:25 swing to the hand off to Adam.
Adam rolled, and the rest is history. He put an extra 2:05 on top of what I did, we won. Fourth year in a row SRC guys have won. The women’s team also pulled off a W. All in all, it was a great day. The competition was pretty awesome, being so close so late. And running with a team is great. The burning in my legs I missed a ton too. This has really gotten me psyched for running again. I feel like I’m in shape (I think I averaged in the 5:30’s if you count the off course section). My mileage is getting up there. I’m healthy. Life is good.
