waveny park summer xc series 2 person relay: race report

thursday was my first waveny summer xc series couples relay without katie as a partner. the race was postponed from its regular tuesday night date because of a nasty weather forecast. on the rescheduled date katie was in brooklyn, for a visit to her grandmother. so my new partner for the relay turned out to be emmy! her original partner, francoise, couldn't make the new date (along with our friend john). but, in a surprise, kate was there to run her first waveny relay!

the course is one mile loop that runs along soccer and baseball fields, tennis courts, and returns to the start/finish via a short out and back in front of the waiting (and cheering) teammates. it's a fun course. each runner does a mile and trades off to his partner, who runs the next mile and, in turn, trades back to her partner until 6 loops (miles) are completed. in the past, when katie and i ran it together, there was little chance of coming in first in our combined age group.

with emmy as a partner, there was a good chance we could win our age group - if we ran fast! emmy had complained of a sore foot before the race (and i wasn't really in race-ready state of mind myself). since she would run first, i would take my lead from her first mile. if decided to run fast (under 7), i'd race it. she blew through the first mile, sore foot and all, in 6:37 - so it was race mode!

here are our splits (run to my mental soundtrack of the talking heads, "life during wartime" lyrics: "this ain't not party, this ain't no disco - this ain't fooling around...."):

6:37
6:33 13:10
6:35 19:45
6:35 26:20
6:38 32:58
6:30 39:28

6:35 combined pace

we won our age group - and the very nifty race tee shirts in the above picture! but the best part of the night was easily the post-race sam adams rob brought (and sushi emmy had).

here are my race photos.