[Note. Blue Ridge Relay Race Report. Part I of the story is here. Part II is over here. The next part is here.]
As all teams probably did, we went into this race with a strategy. My original goal was to try to sneak a couple hours sleep in as dusk was falling, and then doze at each checkpoint throughout the night as we waited. Sounded reasonable…
The next checkpoint on our journey was Grandfather Mountain Market, that is a cute little store filled with nicknack’s and souvenirs. And just like Tanger Outlets, it was packed. So, we hung out, ate a little, and passed time. Joe handed off to Ryan for one of the legs we were dreading, heading up Grandfather Mountain. This was a long, gradual climb. At 10 miles, it’s also one of the longest legs of the race. Ryan’s estimate, 90 minutes. Perfect for the strategy, I’d probably get 60 minutes of sleep.
Heading up, we ran into our first, and only, asshole. Yeah, you heard me, adult language. There was a guy in a sports car coming down the road weaving all over the place. He was in control of the car, just trying to be cool. Sorry buddy, there was nothing cool about you. When Ryan finished the leg, he told us the guy tried to run him off the road, and he was laughing like crazy. What an ass!
Now, for those of you who missed the adventure of us trying to find our cabin, it gets dark in the mountains when you’re not in a city. What? You don’t believe me? Okay, here is a picture I took while we waited for Ryan. This is a 4 second exposure, usually enough to light up the night a bit. Go ahead. Click on it for the large size. You’ll see a star or two.
So, for strategy, it was perfect for my shuteye…however, at the exchange point, it was again packed, and this made it very loud. Everyone screaming for their teammates, plus headlights and flashlights, there was nary a closed eye second to be had. So, we switched to the backup plan: Caffeine. Down the hatch goes Red Bull number one. Tastes awful, but it does work.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit I was a little grumpy for the first part of this exchange. I was looking forward to my nap! Note one thing for the packing list next year, an eye mask.)
The night continued…it was still dark. All was well. Until Exchange 17. The exchange point was right at a turn in the road. To park, we went around the turn, hung a sharp left, and hit the parking lot. It was quite, so we tried getting a couple minutes of shuteye while we waited…I failed, so went up to the point to wait with the guys.
It’s worth noting that our technique that seemed to work was that at every exchange point, 3 guys minimum would wait. The guy taking over, obviously. Then, two other people with a drink and cool towels. Before each person left, we asked them what they wanted when they finished, so we had a drink waiting for them. One person would help the runner with a drink and walk with him, while the other would put the towels on his head/back, to help him recover. Worked great except once, when our guy (Joe) was about 6 minutes ahead of schedule, so we weren’t ready yet. (This was a moment where I slept! Yay for me.)
There were other teams not so well organized. Quite a few times, we saw runners finish, and their team was nowhere to be seen because they were goofing off in thte parking lot or something. Yes, we saw people break out in tears when they had to go for a 1/4 mile hike to find their person. Come on people…teamwork. (Okay, end vent.)
Well, at this point, Duane took off and we walked slowly back to the van and headed down the road a few minutes later. We’re cruising down the road, and we pass a couple runners. Then we see some that we know left before Duane did, and we know he didn’t pass them. That’s a bad thing.
We turn around and head back, checking a couple roads that just turn out to be driveways. All the way back to the exchange point, we head down the road we had to take to park. Surely, he didn’t go this way…but as we head down, we see a guy about a mile down the road. We got him pointed in the right direction (180 degrees around) and continue down the road. A couple miles, we figure we would have seen him heading back already.
We turned around, and headed back to the exchange point. Enroute back, we pointed one other guy in the right direction. Boy, he was pissed! (And he had only gone about a 1/2 mile down the road.) All the way back to the exchange point, and still no Duane. Turn around again and head back.
Oh, here he comes, cruising down the road with a gal. We pull up, and he’s just as happy as can be, “Hey, this is Stacey from the Christian Runners.” She took a wrong turn too, got a little further down the road, turned around and ran into Duane. They were heading back, and ran into the Minnesota Adventure Club, a group of ladies down from (you guessed it) Minnesota. (Sorry, don’t know their actual team name, but we ended up seeing them over and over again for the rest of the night.) They lost a runner too.
After everyone got straightened out, and was on the right road, total tally we know of was 5 teams getting lost down this road. I’m guessing there was at least 10 that did it, probably more. (If you did, leave a comment because I’m curious.)
We went to the exchange point to tell them, and they were packing up because every team except one had come through. The confusion was the sign for the relay had a straight ahead arrow. It was before the intersection. Because of how it was placed, or the wind, or whatever, the arrow pointed straight inbetween the Y in the road, so either direction could be the right way.
Well, again, the strategy changed. For the rest of the night, we were going to stop at every corner or questionable point to make sure we went the right direction. The Christian Runners were going to do the same thing, as as things went along, there were a couple other teams that did this too. (As we kept talking to them at the corners.)
The other thing that changed was that as we were going along, we started checking in with every runner we saw for the rest of the night. Male, Female, we didn’t care. We slowed down enough to say ‘Hey, are you okay?”. The reason was that at the same point where everyone got lost, one young lady came in scared out of her mind. She was freaked out because someone has painted something on the road that freaked her out. So, in the interests of anyone else out there, we just figured it was worth doing a sanity check as we passed people. So, if you got passed by us, and were wondering why the hell we were asking how you were doing, that’s why. (You’d know it was us because we had the big white van with 6 smelly guys in it. Okay, maybe that wasn’t reassuring. 
The good news is we didn’t have any more mishaps with getting lost.
The bad news is I got no sleep. Good thing we had more Red Bull! I did manage to snag 10 minutes of sleep at one point. After seeing one van in a ditch right before sunrise, I decided sleep was essential, since this was a big worry of mine. Truly, safety was a concern, and I wanted to make sure I got enough sleep to be alert enough to drive.
During all this, we leaped frog with The Christian Runners, the Joy of Six, Tier 1 Group (The Marine ultra team) and the Minnesota ladies. At one point, the marines dropped a man, and I felt pretty bad for them. And if any of you read this, rest assured your driver was extremely upset by this. He was wandering around a field muttering about losing a guy.
The rest of the night went well…we were looking forward to pancakes the next morning. But that’s a story for the next post. Also coming up will be, in my opinion, the best photo of the race. (Yeah, that’s some build up for you!)
