A Team – Stateline at Sunrise

A Team – Stateline at Sunrise

9:40 a.m. and the A Team has just finished our first leg. Overall, I'd say the general sentiment is "Too Legit to Quit." I'm just going to go ahead and be honest here, this is a team of studs – myself excluded.  Here's how each person's leg of the relay went down:

Thomas – El Capitan started us off strong at 5:57am  in the chilly 57 degrees to pick up the 5-mile leg of our relay. He was able to fend off some acutely aggressive Chihuahuas while kicking it up hill and still maintaining a 8:20 pace. Obviously, this was a pretty tremendous start to our day.

Jared – Luckily for him the chilly weather mitigated the alluring scents of roadkill shortly after the pass off from Thomas. Relatively consistent with our Captain he maintained a 8:37-mile pace: however, he had the unfortunate luck of his teammates having not quite mastered the RV door and was forced to run about an extra quarter of a mile while we tried to figure out how to release Christine from RV captivity.

Christine – Seriously, this girl fought some hills. Her four-mile-stint was filled with long, steep hills and she still managed bust out an 8:50-mile pace. On a personal note, as someone who runs relatively frequently with Christine through our neighborhood, I was more than impressed (read: intimidated and jealous) with what she busted out.

Brooke – I *should* completely gloss over my 10-minute mile pace performance, seeing as it was by far the most lackluster performance of the crew. My biggest challenge was not knowing how hard to take hills, for fear of how my body will hold-up and how long I had left. Luckily Trey came to my rescue as I was on a nice long somewhat downhill through downtown Heflin.

Trey – Where do we even begin with Trey, or as we are affectionately calling him Two-Cubed? Our relationship with Trey began with him regaling the tale of his attempt at his first marathon last weekend, which was re-routed and he subsequently only got to finish 22.2 miles. He feels owed that extra four-miles and we may feel obliged to give him four extra miles during this little excursion. Again, I digress. Trey got into his run striding out in about a 7:30-mile pace and unfortunately for him we stumbled into some construction. No joke, we had to stop, as did he. The sweet sweet irony came when we looked at the odometer and noticed to our amusement, sweet Trey had completed (wait for it………) 2.2 miles. Once we got moving again he was able to pull-out an 8:45-mile pace INCLUDING THE CONSTRUCTION STOP. (Yes, feel free to point out his stop-and-go pace, was quicker than my consistent slog).

Chesley – I'm trying to resist thinking that Chesley purposely nominated himself as the anchor of the relay (you know, to make up time for some of our slower runners). He got the smooth-sailing-down-hill paltry 3.4 mile leg of the race. We were already making pretty decent time, but for what I assume was an attempt to make up for his shorter-than-average leg of the relay, Chesley pulled out all the stops and wowed us with a tasty little 7:35-mile pace.

After the A-Team finished our entire first leg of the relay, were treated with much enthusiasm to yummy breakfast complete with some electrolyte-replenishing Gatorade. Now, its off to rest, relax, and come up with some more RTFR shenanigans. HOLLA ATCHA FROM THE A-TEAM!