Notes
Woke up at 4:00 am, just in time to rinse off and get dressed for the drive to Haymarket Park. Peered at a couple of vans before seeing David drive up with ours. Soon got the news that Andrew Parr bailed on us, due to "symptoms". Ugh, suddenly we're a 7 person team, and everything got shuffled - I was moved from my prime #1 spot to #6, and 3 runners were moved from 2 stages to 3.
Got to Aksarben about 7:20 am, plenty early; in fact, David and Rod decided that we could take off in the 6:40 wave instead of 7:00. Good call, much nicer to finish that much earlier. It was chilly; we were happy to have our over-wraps and gloves. Got a quick pic in the dark, then sent Rod off and piled back into the van.
I had a banana and a granola bar and a fair amount of water; my preferred easy pre-race breakfast.
Did the pile-out, cheer, pile back in process 5 times before it was my turn. Took the wrist band rather clumsily from Dave at NE Christian College. This was mostly gravel roads, but there was generally hard clay packed around the gravel, so it was a good surface. I did, however, remember the long, rolling hills of the county roads, mostly uphill. Long effort before finally turning south onto the level trail. I was quite happy with the 8:27 pace after passing the baton to Alicia.
David and Rod were the DDs. It was really nice to sit in the back with no responsibilities other than running. Getting spoiled.
Runner order:
1 Rod Madsen
2 Cici Hall
3 Derek Trutna
4 David Franzen
5 Dave Johnson
6 Me
7 Alicia Minzel