HMRRC Winter Marathon Relay 2014

Hurray for a long weekend! I took Friday off (Valentine’s Day) just because and I enjoyed our recent snow storm, again, by driving out to Five Rivers for some snowshoeing!

 

Chris had to work during the day so I decided to get some snowshoeing in. There weren’t many people there yet, so I had to break trail in a few spots. For example, I wanted to hike the “North Loop” which was ~2.5 mi long, but more than half of it hadn’t been broken in.

I tried for a little bit, but with snow two feet deep, it was really exhausting.

I wandered around for about an hour and worked up a good sweat.

Friday night Chris and I went to Pump Station for dinner and beer, which was nice and low key. We met our friends there and just hung out for Valentine’s Day. 🙂

Sunday was my fourth Winter Marathon Relay! And like Winter Marathon tradition, the weather was ~15 degrees with 15MPH winds (felt like 3 degrees) at the start of the race. I would expect nothing else at this point. I thought last year’s weather was the worst, but I think 2014 gave it a run for its money. (See recaps from 2011, 2012, and 2013.)

My team this year was Melissa and Bowden, my friends from my 2012 Ragnar Team!

I had leg #1 again, the first 9.7 mi leg.

Some parts of the course were so windy I thought I was going to get blown away. What I wore for the Relay:

Hat
Gloves
Fleece-lined tights
Tank
Long-sleeve hooded top
Zip up jacket
Fleece neck buff

I ended up taking my gloves off  but that was it, I stayed warm!

I completed Leg 1 in 1:37:00–around a 10 minute mile pace. I had wanted to run faster but the conditions were pretty awful.

Melissa’s leg was next (~5 mi), followed by Bowden’s (~11 mi) and both of them did great–our final marathon time was 4:23. Not too bad, eh? Nice job, team!