Yesterday, I ran the marathon relay in the Baltimore Running Festival. Teams of four make up the relay, with each leg ranging from 5.7-7.3 miles.

Now, I am technically tapering, but that was a little too short for taper week one! I considered running an extra leg of the relay, but we needed four people on our team and gear handoff would have been complicated that way. I didn’t want to run six miles with a backpack!

Late last week, I got to thinking about when I would make it up to the expo to pick up our packets. The expo ran all day and into the night Thursday and Friday, but I was busy both nights. I would have to make the trip to Baltimore during the day.

I considered taking a half day on Friday … but then my boss and I reviewed my workload for the rest of the year. Turns out I’m pretty booked — I might have a hard time using up my vacation time based on the current schedule.  I decided to take the whole day off, since I had a little breathing room between deadlines.

I slept a little later than usual, ate breakfast, and headed off for a run to start my Friday! It was a cool, sunny day and I had a great run through town, into Quiet Waters Park, and back home.

Some nice views in the park!

I ended up with 13 miles, at a comfortable 10:22 average pace. Now I didn’t have to worry about adding distance to the relay!

I met most of my team to carpool to Baltimore at 5:30 am. We wanted to make sure we beat the traffic! After stopping for coffee and picking up the fourth teammate closer to her home, we were on our way. And yes, we arrived way too early, but we didn’t want to miss the first relay bus that left at 7:30.

No problem, we got our gear together, pinned on our bibs, and hit the restrooms. It wasn’t long before we sent our leg 2 runner off on her bus, and our leg 1 runner to the start line.

Once the race was underway, I headed over to my bus — I was taking the last leg. We left at 8:30 but had a little runner-related traffic. Before we were even at the relay exchange point, I got a text message that the first runner was finished with his 5.7 miles in about 48 minutes. A nice start!

Once we got to the relay zone, I got in line for the port-o-potties. I didn’t really need it at the time, but figured I might as well. I knew I had more than two hours to wait! While in line, we got to watch some of the wheelchair racers come through, and we saw the lead runners. Pretty cool.

That killed about 30 minutes! Then I found my place in the relay zone and cheered the runners while trying to stay warm. The sun felt great, but there was a cold breeze! I dressed in lightweight tights and a long-sleeve tech shirt. I wore a fleece jacket and gloves that I handed off to my teammate when it was my turn to run.

I did the relay back in 2005 as well, and we weren’t as smart about it. We didn’t think to hand off clothing and gear bags to our teammates, and we definitely didn’t update each other with our cell phones. It worked out much better this time! I got a call once the leg 2 runner finished, so I knew I had about an hour before it was my turn to run.

I worried about finding her — it wasn’t always easy to hear the race numbers they were announcing, and I had a few rows of runners in front of me. It wasn’t a problem, though. I knew she’d be coming soon, and I was paying close attention. I heard them announce our number, and I made it to the front of the line just as she arrived!

I took the “baton” (a neoprene ankle bracelet that we were instructed to hold), handed of my gear, and started running! Up a hill, of course, but I knew that one was there. Though there were a lot more I wasn’t expecting — I thought by mile 19 most of the hills were done!

I was ready for them, though. I did feel kind of bad blowing past so many tired marathoners and half marathoners, when I was just getting started! But that’s why they had us wear “Relay” tags on our backs!

I didn’t know how fast my legs would go, and I didn’t think I was treating this as a race, but I did pretty well. Started out a little slower than I wanted to go since there were a lot of people to move around, but I found a happy pace. The crowd support in the neighborhoods was great. So many people were out cheering! My favorite, though, were the people DJing from their porch, with speakers on top of their car. When I passed through, there was some club music playing just as we were heading up a steep hill. The runners loved it!

Towards the end I was getting warm, we lost the breeze and I was wishing for some short sleeves! But I needed to be warm for all that time waiting. At least I didn’t have to suffer for too long!

Pretty speedy for a recovery run. I’m happy with that!

Our overall time ended up being 4:02:19. Wow, I’d love to be able to run an entire marathon that fast!