E-zine 05/08/02

Editors comments

The Blazn Fast team was 6th overall and 2nd in the men's category in the relay this last week. Congratulations! More about it in the race report.

Since we had good interest and there is more interest out there we have decided to enter at least one and maybe more teams in the Cross Calgary Relay. Anyone interested in running should contact me via email at blaznfast@aol.com 

Take care out there and remember to think Blazn Fast!

Feature Article

None this week.

Use the members training log area to track your training and lets see how the progress goes.

Race Reports

Banff Calgary Relay - May 4, 2002. With the unsettled weather of late it was looking glum for a good race day but we were fortunate as the flurries and sleet never really materialized and only faced some intermittent cold wind, and aside from usually being from the west we had the wind in our faces from the east throughout the race. 

Race morning saw Richard, Strater and Erik out for the start with Richard running the opening leg. Despite his usual faster runs Richard was off a heavy training week and ran some 7 minutes slower than last year and the team was sitting in 24th at the end of leg 1. It was much worse at the mile mark into the leg when Richard opened with a 7:30 mile and was 42nd at that point before slowly getting into the groove and by midway was running under 6:45's and making headway through the pack. 

Geoff picked up the team and passed some 16 runners moving us up to 8th place overall, not bad for a team that expected to be between 10th and 20th. Geoff finished with a 7th place finish on his leg.

Mark P came in at that point to move the team through one more position and his 30th place run was enough to move the team up to 7th place before handing off to Strater who faced a grueling uphill leg 4 with some of the strongest runners in the relay against him. Our resident Clydesdale was strong enough to hold off most of the pack and the team was still in the top 15 after getting through two of the top 4 difficulty legs with our two ringers left to run.

Vladimir began strong with a 6:15 mile and held the pace through 10 miles and won the leg placing first out of 120 in what was cold and windy type conditions. With his stellar run Vladimir had moved the team all the way to 5th place before he in turn passed off to Rob, the seasoned hill runner. Running the toughest hill leg of the race Rob climbed the elevation in a 5th place time moving the team into a solid 4th place position. This was Rob's 4th or 5th time running what many consider the toughest leg of the race with its nasty 4km climb midway in the leg and the 600m brutal final climb at the leg finish.

Bernie was running the last of the tough legs on leg 7 and started the 17km leg with numerous heavy hitters hunting him down. Running well within his range for the first 5 miles Bernie was being closed on by 6 runners who started about a mile back and were gaining a minute per mile on him. It looked like it would be very close but at the halfway mark Bernie picked it up a notch and the chase group started to fade on the hill at halfway. With this turn in events with about 5 miles left they were closing but not as fast and Bernie was through to the very tough last 3 miles with about a 1:30 - 2:00 minute lead. Two of the chase group were still in range while the others had burned themselves out. In the last mile it became a desperate attempt to catch Bernie but it was not to happen as Bernie ran the last uphill mile in just over 7:00 to PR his 10km over the last half of the long 17 km stage.

Brian took the team through the next 10km over a minute ahead of his projected pace and only one of the chase teams could make ground and we slipped just one place to 5th before Erik took over and held the ground against the team ahead and only lost some minimal distance on the chasing 6th place team.

Leg 10 saw Rick have to start in the forced start and it became difficult to know where things stood and running 3 minutes faster than estimated Rick dropped the 6th place team well behind him but the 7th place team had their ringers on the last two legs and were able to overtake and move well ahead of us. Mark R. ran a strong final leg to close on 3 of the 5 teams ahead at this point but not enough to move us up as we finished 6th.

Since this was a recreational team and we were hoping to finish somewhere in the top 20 we were very excited to have had the success we did. In the end the team was just over a minute of the initial estimate and less than 20 seconds off the revised estimates made race morning.

At the awards everyone had a great time, except with the usual awards delay and the Blazn Fast Relay team was a success and looks forward to the next race.

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