Day 23: Rum Runners Relay 2011 Preview

Racing the traditional road race distances is great – 5k, 5mi, 6mi, 10k, half marathon, marathon. I love the history of them, love fighting for PBs, love gauging my progress against past races of the same distance. But sometimes it’s nice to change it up – to race a unique distance. Like 17.1k or 10.9k or some other random distance. That way I can race clean, without the burden of personal history, without worry over PBs and whether or not I’ve peaked and all that neurotic stuff I pile onto runs. Road relays provide just such an opportunity to forget about the past... as long as you haven’t, over the years, run all the legs of a particular relay!

The Gonzos created this race -- Thank you Gonzos!

This Saturday is the 27^th running of the Rum Runner’s Relay, which winds its way along old highway 3 from Halifax to Lunenburg, dividing the 110k into 10 legs. It’s not like a traditional continuous relay, where a baton is passed and the winning team crosses the finish line first. Instead, all team runners for a particular leg start at the same time once runners of the previous leg have finished. That way, you get 10 exciting races instead of one long, boring, decided-after-leg-1 race (which is what it would be). It also helps to build a kind of community spirit among participants. Everyone moves along from leg starts to leg finishes/starts as a herd. And the whole carnival blows through in a day, from 6:00am to 7:00pm.

The Course

I’m running for Leah’s team again this year – the Outliers. I ran leg 6 in 2009 (Hubbards to East River) and leg 8 in 2010 (Chester to Western Shore). This year, I requested leg 4 – the longest leg. It starts at the fire hall in Head of the Bay and scoots along the shore to Queensland Beach, 17.1k in total. Because it’s the longest leg, teams will often use their strongest runner, so it should be a very interesting race. 

A neat photo of Queensland Beach from Flickr

I was lucky enough to win my two previous legs, but I’m not sure what the chances are that I’ll keep that streak alive. Rami usually runs leg 4 for the Halifax Running Club team (who always wins by a long shot), but there is some talk that he’s given the leg up due to an ongoing hamstring issue. Now, I don’t wish injury upon Rami – he’s the pride of men’s marathoning in Nova Scotia and a friend. But, nor do I wish to race him – because I’ll lose – by a lot. So if he chooses to be cautious and run a shorter leg, that would be just fine by me.

It may be that Ray M. will be taking leg 4 in his place. Ray may not be Rami, but he’s a fearsome competitor – and rumour has it that he’s very fit. Nevertheless, with Ray, I’ll have a shot – we are pretty well matched these days, although his PBs are much stronger than mine. It could be quite exciting. Harry N. has also run this leg in the past – he’s an extremely strong runner as well (his PBs put mine to shame) and would certainly challenge for the win if he runs it (and is fit). There are other guys whose names I don’t recognize who have run fast times in the past two years (well behind Rami, but fast nonetheless). All those 2^nd and 3^rd place guys ran around what I hope to run... which means there could be a few guys in the hunt.

Mass start = more fun

Although the weather for Sat doesn’t look great, I’m pumped for the RRR. I’ve had a good few weeks of training, and my hip is very close to being pain free. We’ll see how much that 5 weeks of missed workouts has set me back...

Go Outliers!