Reach the Beach. Only can a bunch of runners find joy in running with 11 other friends, through day and night, with limited sleep, and being stuffed in vans for hours on end.

What? No Vans?

As we drove up to Cannon mountain around 6:00 am, we weren’t in our normal passenger vans, but instead Chevy Suburbans. This was the second year in a row we had issues with our van rentals. I would NEVER recommend anyone book passenger vans through a third-party site. The “technical glitches” allowed us to book vans that don’t exist. So after many hours on the phone with the rental company, the best we could do were Chevy Suburbans. The Suburbans were decked out in leather and all the techno gadgets you could possibly want. It was a little cramped in the third row, but otherwise, not bad. The seats were certainly more comfortable than a van and we had navigation and a sweet sound system. Read on for more.

Fall Is Here to Stay

When we arrived at Cannon Mountain, the thermometer read 40 degrees. Brrr. We went through the normal waiver turn in, safety gear check, orientation, and then packet and number pickup. The weather was so cold, cloudy, and misty, we decided to forgo the “official” team picture and keep our runners warm inside.

After our first runner took off it was my turn to get ready for my nearly 9 miler.

First Run (Leg 2)

My first leg was an 8.9 miler through the White Mountains and finishing at Bretton Woods.

I ran this leg with my Nathan Race Vest. I had about 30-35 ounces of water in it and two sleeves of Clif Bloks…one Orange and one Margarita. The Race Vest makes life significantly easier when you consider there is no need to have your van stop and give you water at a specific time and it stores the Clif Bloks rather nicely. For runs over 8 miles, I prefer this to a bottle strapped around my waist.

The route was relatively flat with a few rollers. It was cool out and I felt really good throughout the entire run. I ran an average pace of 8:14/mile which was 30 seconds faster per mile than I had predicted. Overall, I wound up passing 4 people and felt really great at the end.

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Second Run (Leg 14)

I was expecting this second run of 3.7 miles to hurt significantly as it was after my nearly nine mile first leg. But it was interesting. Right after the first leg I used “The Stick” (something I acquired after last year’s Reach the Beach). That and two Advil and I felt absolutely fantastic.

I wound up heading out with a first mile just shy of 7:00/mile. “Woah” I told myself. You’ve got to slow down or you’ll have nothing left for Leg 3. So I backed the pace off a bit and to my surprise, still blew through mile two with a pace of 7:17. Damn. At this point, I had figured what the hell, keep it up…only a little over a mile and a half left. Right around mile 2.5 I felt a cramp coming on (likely due to the meatball sub I had for dinner). It was rather unfortunate as this cramp caused me to slow down a bit and forced my third leg to be a little slower than it could have been. My third mile bumped up to a 7:41 pace with the remaining 0.7 miles holding an 8:03 pace. Overall, I had an average of 7:28/mile which was good enough for my second best recorded 5k in recent years on Strava and 45 seconds faster per mile than my projected pace.

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Third Run (Leg 26)

So now we get to my third leg which was also the “wild card” leg. Runner 1 and I could transition anywhere over a 3 mile stretch of road. Our first runner took on the most combined mileage of any runner throughout this year’s RTB so we decided to exchange around the 5 mile mark for his leg. It turns out my leg became 6.4 miles total.

Similar to my second leg, I still felt really strong. Wow, this race was going very well. All but the last mile or so was flat or rolling/downhill. I knew the last mile would be really tough and gave up a lot of the ground I made up in the first 5 miles or so. I was running on average just shy of sub 8:00/mile pace for the first 5 miles. There was a guy in front of me that served as a really nice pacer. After this, well, it was steeply uphill. I still managed an average of 8:11 for this leg which was 15 seconds per mile faster than my projected pace.

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Another RTB Comes and Goes

So overall I was blown away by how strong my legs felt. The paces were right where I wanted and needed them to be. I had a slow start to my summer training, but am happy with the results. We had a great team and a lot of fun.