I wondered after last year’s run, if 5 exuberant teams, including an award-winning Masters team, could possibly be topped.
At the beginning of the year, Todd put out the sign-up sheet, and I wasn’t completely confident that we would have 5 teams again, despite the fact that we had had 42 people show up to a Wednesday workout just a few months prior.
However, by the time it came to mail the forms in, we had a full 7 teams! All that was left was to coordinate our pasta party and get everyone to the starting line.
The Saturday evening before the run saw Bernard, Todd, Todd, Laura, Margaret, Tracy, Ken, and Ian (though an hour after everyone left) enjoying pasta and dessert, under the auspices of a looming rainstorm. I mean, how fun could it be to run and wait to run in the rain?
The morning of the race came, and most people met at Heartwell Park at 5:15am to carpool up. The Mad Cows and Geezers made alternative plans.
The difference from previous years was that all runners would be shuttled in from a parking lot 2 miles outside of the park, and this shuttle service would end 30 minutes prior to the start, so if you weren’t there, you were screwed.
Although my group of Mad Cows arrived at 7am, it still took us until nearly 7:30am to reach AREC headquarters, and in fact, the race start was delayed because they really didn’t have enough buses.
By the time the race started, most of the scheduled AREC runners had arrived, with a few NOTABLE exceptions – Colleen Callin, from the Hormones (all-women) team was out sick, and only Dennis Murphy and Dick Ames of the Geezers team had arrived. Those two guys were busy consulting who would run 3 legs and who would run 2!
Although the skies were fairly dark, it wasn’t raining and it wasn’t terribly cold, though Todd Rose had planned for that eventuality and all our stuff was under the AREC tent.
The race was delayed a little by the shuttling fiasco, and gave the Geezers fresh hope that their members would arrive. Meanwhile, the Hormones were negotiating with Laura (the Mad Cows first leg) to run their last leg, which was largely dependent on how much time she had to recover between 5-mile legs.
Finally, the speeches and grandstanding began, with R.J. Wagner and Chris O’Donnell doing the honors. Our first 7 runners (Laura, Victor, Dennis, Brook, Warren, Lars and Margaret) were off!
Now began the usual task of jogging over to the course (which this year was 3 miles, instead of 1.5 miles), cheering on and snapping pictures of our runners, and running back to HQ to witness the hand-off to the next leg.
The first team to make the hand-off was the Hares? (so named because it was 3 really fast guys and a couple older racers) passing to Ed Villalobos, but not far behind were the Geezers (Dick Ames), Jackalopes (Elke), and Mad Cows (Chuck). A few minutes behind these teams were the Mixed Nuts (Nicole), Leftovers (Stacey), and the Hormones (Veronica).
Dick Ames was asking someone to alert him if Neva and Bill Higgins, or the 5th member of their team had shown up, because he didn’t want to exhaust himself, if he was going to run an additional 10 miles! (But they showed up just a few minutes after Dick set out. Phew!) Meanwhile, the Mad Cows had chosen Joel Rojas as a substitute for the injured Tracey Johanson. (Maybe some of you know Joel as “Sin-D Bare.” We figured Cindy would make a good sub for Tracey.)
By the time the third leg came around, the running between the course and the HQ was almost manic, because the teams were pretty spread out. You couldn’t just stand and watch a steady stream of leg 3 competitors (Joel, Mark, Bernard, Kurt, Jill and Frankie) come by in rapid succession. You had to see one and then run back for the next hand-off, and then back for another runner. Sometimes people were missing other racers on the course entirely because they were tending to their own teammate.
And some exhausted souls, having finished their own legs, headed directly over to the beer enclosure and ignored the other runners!
Through it all, though, the weather held up. It kept threatening to rain, but never did.
As the legs of the race came closer to my own, I started to go get “duded” up for the final leg, and concentrate less on the other runners. There was a bit of a competition brewing between the Mad Cows and the Hares? (who had beaten the Mad Cows by just a few seconds last year!).
I would be well-armed, with double-cow baton in hand and my teammates with cow toy and inflatable cow at the 5 mile mark…
Todd Byers had just lapped the Hormones team and had given me the lead, so I knew that I had to have about 10 minutes on Jason Reneau (leg 5 of the Hares?) in order to win the AREC cup.
The hardest part in being far ahead was triumphantly passing someone and then seeing on the turnaround that they were 1-2 legs behind me, yet, all the people that passed me were on the final leg! The best part was seeing other AREC teams, regardless of where they were in the race. I exchanged cheers with Christy (twice), Neva and Ian.
As I came to the finish, clutching all those cows, R.J. announced, “Everyone cheer for the Got Milk Guy!” and we were done… 5 cool minutes ahead of the Hares?!
Although the beer enclosure was calling my name, I rested briefly and went to go watch our other teams finish up. The Geezers managed to finish 3rd again, and Bill Higgins ran TWO legs! In fact, all 7 teams finished within 1 hour, 21 seconds of each other.
Finally, most of us were in the beer enclosure talking about the fun we’d had, posed for pictures and got lots of free food. The Mad Cows, Bernard, and Ed actually stayed until they shut off the taps and rode the last shuttle to the cars. I am already looking forward to next year’s edition. I hope you will be there!