Van 2 Perspective

Here's the Van 2 perspective of things.  I was going to do a little editing, but when I saw the category that my e-mail client assigned to the e-mail from Rick, I decided to leave things as intact as possible (I did filter out the e-mail addresses of my fellow runners).

Here it is:

From: Rick
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 2:12 PM
To: Brian
Cc: <snip>
Subject: Re: RTB Results

Categories: Spam

Wow.  Van #2 is taking it on the chin here.  I think some air time for Van #2 is fair.


Well, I don't know about the rest of Van #2 but I don't recall seeing much of Van #1 during our runs.

As I recall, Van #2 was there to cheer on for the first three legs before rushing to the first VTA while barely finding time to fuel up and scout out something good for lunch so that Van #1 could properly recover.  Although, why Van #1 would need to recover after their gentle terrain is beyond me.  I think a fig newton would have sufficed for that kind of effort (Dave's leg excluded, of course).

When Van #2 valiantly took over, they did appreciate Van #1 providing some cheering support on one (and only one) leg of the 6 legs.  (IMG_2207.jpg - try turning around Brian....Van #2 was parked in front of you!).

Even though Van #2 knew that their efforts to maintain the lead that Van #1 had provided would be under-appreciated, we still ran our hearts out.

Once we got Adrien off the phone, Adrien out ran Van #1 who must have been languishing over their sandwiches and handed off to Carol who had the most difficult leg next to leg #1. 

Carol completed her leg in good spirits despite her injury and handed off to Amy  Jo and tackled her hills with gusto.  I'm sure that the help she received from Van #1 contributed to her success in some small fashion.

I then took the handoff from Amy Jo and began my uphill leg discovering that sometimes, it actually is faster to walk than to plod up a hill..  Suprisingly I managed to maintain my 11:00min pace (http://tinyurl.com/7a54s for proof.  Scroll back to 9/16) and keep us on track before handing off to Jeremy who ate up terrain like a fire through a dry forest.

Jeremy handed off to Heidi who ran a picture perfect leg like a natural born runner. I'm not even sure I recall see her break out in any type of sweat.  Easy stuff!

Finally, we caught up to Van #1 who were rested after their sight-seeing and willing to pitch in with this run.  We almost didn't recognize Van #1 since we had only seen them once during our legs.   We know that some of Van #1 didn't recognize some in Van #2.

At this point, Van #2 refueled at the VTA and then went to the next VTA (cheering  along the way) to catch an hour
snooze while waiting for Van #1.  Well, most of us took a cat nap.  I think Adrien was on the phone (he must have one of those phones from '24' with the never ending battery).

Van #2 commended Van #1 as they were forced to run through a monsoon at night.  We're sure it was difficult and we greatly appreciated the effort! 

At the VTA, Rick parked just up the hill and walked back to make sure the hand-off from Mike to Adrien was smooth.  Mike came running up looking quite soggy and cold and handed off to Adrien, glad to be done with his run.  Mike asked where Van #1 was and, unfortunately, Rick had no answers to give as no one from Van #1 was there to meet him and guide him to the van for a change of clothes.  Rick got him going in the right direction and then rushed off to provide support for Adrien. 

Van #2 then tracked their runners, stopping every 3/4 to a mile or so to make sure that no one got lost in the dark until the next VTA.  Van #2 was very supportive of our entire team and was always full of enthusiasm and laughs.  And, we had a bigger van for more room! 

Heidi timed her run perfectly so that Dave wouldn't have to wear a headlight and Van #1 was off again. 

We cheered Dave on as he went through his brutal terrain and then stopped to cheer on the transition before heading off to find some coffee and breakfast. For a bunch of small towns it's amazing the LACK of breakfast places.....seems like a business opportunity.

For the last 6 legs, everyone pulled in their times and we pulled out an amazing 31:30 finish capped by Andy "My feet don't touch the ground" Bragg.

All in all a great effort.


- Rick

p.s. For the record, it's ITB, not IDB.

http://www.time-to-run.com/injuries/thebig5/itb.htm.  When you get it, you'll know it.