MC200 Part II - Legs 13-24 (or dang it's dark out)

Update: Megan has posted the relay in pictures over on her blog (photos courtesy of Shaun - I never take pictures).

After we left Van 1, we grabbed a bad dinner, got stuck in horrendous traffic trying to get to Milwaukee ("F$%& you old lady!"), and then tried to catch a few zzzs in a high school gym. I got ready for Van 1 to come in and got decked out in blinky lights and my head lamp. Tim came cruising in at about midnight and off I went.

This was my longest leg, 6.3 miles. My van was supposed to stop for me half way, but kindly sent me a text message that said they couldn't figure out where to park and I was completely on my own (thanks guys!). The first half of my run was on a windy road through the trees that followed a river. To say it was dark would be an understatement. There was no one ahead of me and no one behind me. I saw approximately three vehicles drive down the road the entire time. But it was peaceful (I was mostly concerned about the fact that the area was really secluded).

Actually during this time, Team 26, the Accenture team, caught up to me. Their van was shadowing their runner and they were supernice and would wait for me too and give me words of encouragement as well (as well as confirm that I wasn't getting lost). I almost asked to join their team instead ;-p

The second half was on some pretty uninteresting larger roads where I was heckled. Seriously people. At least running through the pitch black woods was quiet.

I came in at pretty much exactly 10 minute miles and I decided I was okay with that. Then I handed off to Mark who had a pretty long leg to finish. We bumped into Team 26 in an abandoned parking lot (it's time to rumble!) waiting for their runner Mark who was running the same leg.

So the night runs are totally the best! As team captain, I reserve the right to choose my position and I totally pick a position with the longest leg in the middle of the night (hey, if you have a problem with it, you stress out about finding 11 other runners :-)). Joe finished up our van at day break (thwarted once again from his night time run - who knew the sun came up at 4am in Wisconsin?!!!). We met up with Van 1 at the church Al mentioned below and Megan was off again. At this time we also found out that Team 26's first runner had been Megan's nemesis the whole time. What fun is a race without a nemesis? Plus they were nice nemeses (I totally had to look up the plural form).

After a ten hour day in the field, I'm beat, so the end later...

*Note: Reading the comments on Joe's post regarding his 7 pound weight loss in response to me wondering how much weight he lost... He was referring to the fact that he hadn't eaten at all for three days because of his stomach; he wasn't actually trying to lose weight... Dude is skinny enough as it is :-)