Emily was pregnant and I was about to be on three months of paternity leave. My normal hobby of jiu jitsu was pretty rigid with class times and a commute. Who knows when Emily and the baby will need support or more importantly when the baby will finally sleep and I can get out for a minute? Coincidently a coworker convinced me and another coworker to run the Mesa Marathon. The timing lined up well with the paternity leave and running was as flexible as working out could be. Gideon goes to sleep—I step out on a run and am running as soon as I shut the door.
I started my 18 weeks of training using the Hanson Marathon Method beginner marathon training plan as my guide. Over 18 weeks running six days a week I peaked with a couple 16 mile runs and dialed in my nutrition plan. I ran a marathon 10 years prior when I was 19 and my in-race nutrition plan was something that I really overlooked and it cost me. This time I trained with the energy gels the race was going to provide on race day. I figured out how often I needed them and practiced consuming them while running.
I stayed at one of the coworkers apartments closer to Mesa and we woke up at 3am to get to the race start. They actually bussed us up to the start line which was at the top of a mountain overlooking the valley. The Mesa marathon is about as easy as a marathon can get because the majority of it is downhill. I took advantage and cruised the first 3 miles with I think of those mile splits being under 7 minutes. Then miles 4 and 5 were uphill so I took it easy up those. I settled into an about 7:45/mi split up until mile 13. I had a bit of a bathroom situation, but I was fortunate to be near and aid station with a porta potty. I lost about a minute but I kept my pride. I got back moving and fell in with a goal 3:25 finish time pace group, but up ahead of me I saw an Army buddy.
I saw this Army buddy up on the starting point and talked to him, but he’s a huge jacked guy so I definitely didn’t expect to see him doing that well. We ran with each for a couple miles up until mile 20. After mile 20 I picked up the pace and headed for a strong finish. I had negative splits (faster mile splits than my first 6 miles) for the rest of the race and my last two miles were under 7 minute miles! I ran about the perfect race according to my ability level and exceeded my goal of a 3:30 finish. Instead I finished under 3:20!
I was a complete zombie after hobbled to talk to the coworker who invited me to the race who actually backed out but still came to support us. Then I saw my aunt, uncle, parents, and Emily and Gideon! We went out to IHOP and I ate whatever I wanted after that. It was just a good day. I was happy with my effort and I was blessed to have to many people supporting me. God is good!
Baker to Vegas Law Enforcement Relay
I recognize not many people probably read my blog, but this is the first time I am disclosing that I worked for Border Patrol. I’m only disclosing it now that I have quit and moved back to Michigan to be closer to family. With that said, I might post some interesting stories about my time roaming the desert and climbing mountains. However, since this is a post about running I’m going to talk about the Baker to Vegas Challenge Cup Relay. It’s a 120-mile, 20-stage road race for law enforcement agencies that runs annually (since 1985) from Baker, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada. A bunch of different agencies and departments from LAPD to FBI run in the race and I was part of a Border Patrol team. This year’s race took place on March 28-29th.
I kind of got volun-told to do the race since they didn’t have enough agents, but I was coming off the recent marathon so it wasn’t something I needed a lot of convincing for. The harder part is now balancing outside obligations with being a dad. Instead of going up to Vegas for the weekend like most participants I drove up the same day getting to Vegas at 4:30pm. I was tentatively supposed to run my leg sometimes in the evening if we were running according to our projected paces. I got conned into the longest leg—a 10.7 mile leg. I met up with my running group (3 runners). Since the race goes all the way through the night there are shifts of running groups getting shuttled to the different legs in a van throughout the day and night.
What was supposed to be an evening run turned into running my leg around 2am. It was pretty cool to be running in a light up vest with a follow vehicle behind for support and to see the same for the other 270 teams who competed. As I ran along this desert highway somewhere outside of Vegas you could see the string of runners around every curve of the road and up every hill. It was good motivation to try and catch the flashing lights ahead of you to pass another team, but I ended up getting passed about five times and I passed another five teams myself so I kept us about even with where we had started. I managed to do 10.7 mile leg with a 7:28/mi average pace. I was very happy with that. The last two miles were painful since they were pretty much uphill. My watch said after the fact that it was about 900ft of elevation gain so that was a good pace for that!
Once every runner on our team in my group was done we got back in the van and shuttled back. By the time I got back to the hotel and showered it was about 5:30am. I woke up at 9:30am when one of my teammates on a later leg came back in. I decided to skip the team breakfast after finding out it was $54!! So I drove home arriving around 4pm and got to hang out with Gideon and Emily.
Crazy to think in a 30 hour period I drove 6.5 hours to Vegas, ran 10.7 miles in the middle of the night, slept for 4 hours and then drove the 6.5 hours back. All in all I got to run in this really cool 120 mile relay race with a rich history and go to rub shoulders with over 270 different law enforcement teams including a team from Germany. Heck of an experience! God is good!