Dear Faithful Supporters and Fellow Runners

You've heard from various sources that the Reston Runners did themselves proud yesterday in Vermont. We had near-perfect weather (we can't quite imagine how it could have been better, really) and apparently near-perfect preparation. Many of you have been a part of these preparations over the last 6 months - either as partners in marathons and training, or as supporters at our First Annual WiseAss 50 in June. For that, we feel quite blessed.

The team - Jim A, Jim B, Anna B, Mary K, Tim, Jim N, Bill T, and Keith W drove up en masse on Thursday (Tammy M flew), arriving Friday for packet pick up and weigh in. The first indication of overindulgence on this trip - each of us weighing nearly 10 pounds more than we had the day before - was thankfully a technological problem rather than a gastroenterological one. Few of us slept well on Friday night - I believe the average was around 3 hours of intermittent shut-eye - but we were all pressed and ready to go at the 4am start Saturday morning. We had packed expecting the predicted 12 hours of rain and thundershowers, so we were prepared for anything.

The Reston Runners fell into their separate camps early on - by mile 20 Jim A, Tim, Jim B, Keith, and Bill ran within minutes of each other, while Anna, Jim N, Mary, and Tammy were clumped together an hour or so behind. The hills were constant - in fact we enjoyed 14,000 feet of elevation over the 100 miles - they made the dreaded Glade Hill look like a speed bump. We'd completed about 20 pipeline-type hills by breakfast, and had been hearing about the real climbing that happens in the 2nd half. The weather, as it turns out, could not have been more perfect. The rains stopped within the first hour, replaced by cool temperatures and a light breeze.

Our paces continued fairly steadily throughout the day (you can see everyone's splits in great detail, nearly every 3-5 miles of them at  www.barttiming.com/summer/results09/vt100-Aplha-Splits09.htm  with very little RR jockeying for position. Keith was the first to run into any trouble, discovering that his system was not appreciating this form of recreation after about 50 miles. He chose safety over pride, and pulled out at that point. Mary and I sported some fancy blisters, but by and large we managed the event like real champs.

Aside from the hills, your runner friends were confronted with swarms of bugs, plenty of mud, occasional sour stomach, lite chafing, and simple tiredness. These inconveniences were generally handled with modern day treatments like bug wipes, vaseline, tums, caffeine, advil, or moleskin - ready at our fingertips in our little packs. Everything else we could possibly need was provided by cheerful and plentiful volunteers every 3-5 miles (30 aid stations!!) and Michael Bradford and Mark Meehan supported the runners as crew at several stations. Once or twice those inconveniences became real challenges, requiring medical attention - lancing and dressing of blisters (MK, AB) and monitoring of blood pressure during puking sessions (JB) - but nothing that couldn't be managed.

Several helpers donned running shoes to accompany the runners over night: Doug B and Mark M travelled from Virginia for Jim A and Jim B, Mike S travelled from MA for Tim C, Michael Bradford accompanied his mother for the last 11 hours, and the race officials assigned pacers for the rest of the team. And these pacers had no intention of letting their runners wander off the trail or climb into a car for a nap - they took their jobs very seriously.

But this event was not all about overcoming challenges. It was also about putting our training to the test, and discovering that often the test was - go figure - way more fun than we had anticipated. It turns out this year our recreation time - all those miles we'd run and the marathons we'd traveled to and the cross training we'd done with you - fully prepared us for this weekend. Yep - if you play hard enough all year, you can play really hard all weekend.

You'll see by the splits that we really did pretty well as a team. For the short version, I've posted our finish data below. Thank you all so much for the partnership along the way. You were most definitely with us throughout the day.

Anna

JimA and TimC  22:22, average pace 12:37
Jim B 23:08, pace 13:03
Bill T 27:21, pace: 15:21
Mary K 27:32, pace: 15:39
Anna B 28:40, pace: 16:20
Tammy M 29:40, pace: 16:52
Jim N 29:48, pace: 16:57