the mother of all relays...

Next Friday, I'll be starting my first Hood to Coast. This is going to be interesting. I agreed to do this about 4 weeks ago after I had lowered my mileage for my summer vacation from long runs. I then didn't follow my own advise and really entered into a rushed training program. I don't usually do much hill training but I felt that I had better start. Training has gone well but I have had slight right Quad tendon pain after the hills. Last Monday I was assigned to be runner 2 (3rd hardest). At first I thought this would be awesome as I get to run down Mt. Hood. I knew runner 1 had the hardest downhill and I was grateful that wasn't going to be me. But then I looked up runner 2's first leg. Runner 2 gets the pleasure of a 5.67 mile 5% downhill run with no level ground to break it up. Panic began to creep into my mind as I could almost feel my knee saying, " Don't do it stupid, not on the very first leg." I realized that if I ran this downhill leg first, I would likely have problems finishing the race, which would let my team down. Having always volunteered to hard legs (6&8) at River to River, it was hard for me to make the calls to look for someone who would be willing to switch legs. I got lucky when one of my friends from college, who is on the team agreed to give me runner 10 (4th hardest) instead. Runner 10's legs are no picnic. The hardest leg of runner 10 is the second one. It begins with a 1.5 mile 4.7% uphill climb and then drops downhill for 5 + miles. This downhill on paper, looks better as it levels off at times. At least this isn't the first leg. I feel that I have a better chance of not dropping off race pace as runner's 10 last leg is short and more level. As I said, this will be an interesting adventure!