May 18, 2013
To say the weather is hot on Beach to Bay day is more banal then saying water is wet. It's always hot, the unknown is if it will be miserably hot or dangerously hot.
Frankly, any leg after the first along the beach has the potential to kill you, depending how hard you run it. This was especially true this year as the temperate would hit a record high, over 90 degrees.
Fortunately, Cate had leg one this year, which she was running for her school's running club team. She was the only girl on her team's "elementary mix" category submission. Though not as fast as the five boys on her squad, she wasn't far off and she had been improving every race since early April.
So Cate was not officially on our "Keeping up the Jones" team, but an honorary member. Our first leg official runner was Jen, who had also improved significantly this running season. This is especially impressive since she had ACL surgery last year.
Due to logistics, this meant Juliet would have to run the second leg, one of the most difficult in my opinion. Not only is it almost five miles, it is on one of the hottest sections of the course.
For our third leg, one of Jen's training partners volunteered. However, unlike most teams who beg for volunteers, I rarely let anyone who is not ultra fast or family to join our team. Not because I'm an obsessed about our team time and placing, frankly I couldn't careless. Rather, because I know most "volunteers" un-volunteer themselves 1-2 days before the race. However, since Jodi has consistently ran 5ks with Jen this running season, I granted her a dispensation in join our squad.
So the official line up was:
Leg 1: Cate as our honorary, Jen as our official, David as the pacer.
Leg 2: Juliet official, David as pacer
Leg 3: Jodi official, David as pacer
Leg 4-6: David
We woke at 4:00 am to be on the beach by 5:30 so we could find parking. After talking with some friends, we made our way to starting chute with the other 2,400 team first leg runners. I was quite apprehensive about where to place Cate in the chute. To close to the front, she could easily be trampled by the stampede, but too far back, and her she would get boxed in and lose time for her team.
After assessing the speed of other runners by their "look," I decided to place Cate about 40 feet behind the start-line. Jen, who had match Juliet up in the leg #2 chute with Cate's team member, returned to find us among the mass of runners. At 7:00, the gun fired and we were off.
Cate, to my great surprise, followed my coaching advice from the start. I thought she would bolt out like a sub 3:00 marathoner. Instead, she eased out nice and controlled knowing it would be a quarter mile before the congestion cleared..
After a half mile in, we hit the beach headed south. We found a nice stretch of packed sand and Cate settled into nice 10:00 /mile pace. At mile 1, I heard Jen behind us. This was a bit of a surprise as Jen hasn't been quite as fast as the girls since they were six. We all three fell into sync as we made our way past the turn-around and begin the north bound stretch back to Bob Hall pier.
About two miles in, Cate started to slow a little as the sand began to wear on her stride. To push her on, I coached her to run strides of one minute on and one minute off, which I timed on my watch for her. This worked great and she held pace. By mile three, Cate, Jen, and I were all side by side.
Cate's breathing was not over-labored and I knew that she could push a little harder to the finish. I picked up our tempo a tad with a half mile remaining. Cate pushed all the way into the finish of the 3.41 mile leg, entered the chute at 34:50, and handed off to her team mate.
Juliet was standing right there to start our second leg. She and I waited about a minute as Jen came into chute. Juliet grabbed the baton and took off. After about 100 yards on the beach, we turned right and hit the paved access road headed toward the highway.
After a quarter mile, I pulled her back. It's quite amazing how the temperate seems to jump 10 degrees once you get off the windy beach. This is why I think leg two is so difficult. Just about all 4.7 miles are headed south with the wind, which actually makes it feel hotter. Additionally, only one lane of traffic is closed so runners have run along side the slow parade of cars creeping along in the opposite direction.
I didn't think there was anyway Juliet could run in this heat for the full five miles. I told her to make to the 5k mark, and we would gauge it from there. Just short of the three mile mark, Juliet said she needed to walk and catch her breath. I agreed that was the wise choice.
After walking about a minute, she impressed me by her course awareness. She spotted a red-roofed building about a quarter mile off. "Dad, let's run to that building." We did this the next two miles. Juliet would run until she could't catch her breath, and then walk until she spotted a land-mark to shoot for.
After 52 minutes in the now increasing sun intensity, Juliet and I made it under the bridge and handed off to Jodi. Jodi and I began leg three straight up the causeway bridge.
Once over the top, Jodi settled into a nice 9:30 pace all the way until mile 3. Similar to Juliet, Jodi found it hard to breathe in the heat and humidity. We paused and walked for about one minute. Back on pace, I gave Jodi a course break-down to the Naval base exchange point. Knowing the turns and dips ahead of time helped Jodi visualize herself into the finish and she held pace all the way through the 4.37 mile leg.
She handed the baton to me and I would have to take it the remaining 14 miles to the finish. Given it was hot as hell, I was 20 pounds overweight, and hadn't run farther than seven miles since December, my only goal was to survive through the 4.7 mile Naval Base leg.
I made about 3.5 miles into the Base and finally had to pull up. It was now about 10:00 and the heat was more than I could handle. For the next 11 miles I had to walk, jog, and almost crawl to the finish.
At first I would jog a half mile then walk two minutes. Then it became three minutes of jogging followed by three minutes of walking. By mile 24, I would jog one minute and walk three.
Finally, I limped across the finish in 4:52 minutes, our team placing 1336 out of 2446 teams.
Well, like every year, Beach to Bay is a great event but crappy race. However, this year was especially rewarding as Cate, Juliet, Jen, and I were all able to run together.
Juliet at leg two, with Cate's school running team, waiting on Cate to finish leg 1
