Yesterday, one the hottest days of 2008 so far, The Bear Mountain Brawlers (TKS is on this team!) ran the 50 mile relay race Need for Speed from Bear Mountain down to New Rochelle, New York (you might remember we ran this race last year). And you know what? It was f*&$ing hot out yesterday! Look at this weather report! Take note of that heat advisory!
We started off our day at 4:45 a.m. at our apartment. To avoid schlepping to the UWS, Matt slept over and enjoyed some Meat Pasta the night before. Despite Matt’s complaints, we toasted up some bagels with peanut butter and hit the road to pick up Brad. By 5:30am we had Katie in tow and were on our way to Yonkers to meet up with the rest of the team at Tom and Ag’s new gigantic house.
Once everyone arrived, we were on our way to the mountain for the start of the race. As you know, the day was looking to be warm, and when we got to Bear Mountain the temperatures were already pretty high, though luckily we had a 7:45 a.m. start so hopefully our morning runners could beat the insane heat.
“Team 161?… Team 161? Team 161!?” That was the announcer calling our first runner to the start. Katie was in the port-o-potty when we needed to get started. She raced to the start, made it just in time before the officials honked the race horn, kicking off her leg of the race.
Go Katie!!!
The race is really quite beautiful in some areas. Here’s one shot on our way to the first exchange where Katie would hand off the RFID bracelet to Brad.
Here comes Katie!
And there goes Brad! Go Brad!
At this point Matt realizes how awesome the race is and decides to call his Mom and ask her to come cheer him on. J-Bird agrees to come for beers and wings at the end of the race.
Back from his trail run, Brad is stoked to hand off to James.
Super marathoner, James, takes off on his 9 mile run. That’s right: 9 miles. In 90 degree heat. I don’t have a photo but trust us that he returned alive and in good health.
Filling in for Ag’s Mom this year, Ingrid, in from Savannah, had no issues with the heat it seemed. She did great and flew into the exchange in no time after her 3 mile run. She handed off to Tom, we watched him run into the full sun and then drove to our next exchange where we pulled up some grass in the shade. Here you’ll find a slowly melting team.
We started to wonder where Tom was after about an hour. We had estimated everyone’s arrival times and Tom was way late. Is he ok we wondered? He was! He was just saving someone’s life on the trail. Someone has passed out and Tom stayed to make sure an ambulance showed up for him. The life-saver award goes to Tom K.!
Rookie Matt was up next. He had my leg from last year and I promised him there was some shade, but after we took off in our van to find the next exchange and started passing through the course we realized there would be no relief for Matt. Was he prepared for this 6.5 mile leg?
Turns out he was! Yay Matt! He hands off the bracelet to me and I am off!
I ran. And then I walked. And then I ran. Ugh. It was terrible, but it turned out I wasn’t much slower than I would have expected. I ran into some geese on my run, who wouldn’t move off the trail and hissed at me when I got too close. I also encountered a strange photographer who took photos of me at no fewer than four spots on my route. I thought he was an official photographer until I realized he kept showing up at nearly every mile of my run. I never learned what his deal was…
I got to my exchange about an hour later, handed off to Ag and then was hosed off by an old man! It was the best thing that happened all day. Thank god for the old man with the hose!
Ag had an excellent run despite the heat. She took off and was back in no time for the final exchange to Alex.
Alex had the final (read: glory) leg of the race. He originally had plans to run the last section of the race with his new ghetto blaster, but considering most people were dropping like flies without an additional 20 lbs of audio gear, he opted to run without it.
We hurried to the finish line and in came Alex in what seemed like third place (maybe not, but it looked like it)! He had a great and sweaty finish!
The Bear Mountain Brawlers dragged our tired butts to the end of race party for some wings (what? gross!) and beers, but we were hurried out before the awards ceremony thanks to an incoming thunderstorm. Turned out that while we were able to finish the race, the organizers had called the race due to the heat advisory and all the dropping runners by the 6th leg for most teams. Couldn’t they have called the race at say… 7:45 a.m.?
Despite the crazy heat, we all had a great time and held up really well against mother nature. It seemed like with each leg more and more teams had dropped out since the previous exchange, so I am curious to see what the finals stats are for the race and how many people actually showed up this year.
Check out all the water and gatorade we consumed yesterday! See the rest of the photos on flickr.
