25manna relay
Winsplits for my leg. My result is mislabeled as Pontus, there are so many runners that a few mistakes like this happen.
Woke up early to meet the 6:45 bus departure from the clubhouse. I was well prepared with my newly shaved and dyed and styled hair, my vuvuzela, and some red (okay, pink) rice krispy treats to get into the right spirit of the race.
Some shifts in the team rosters had me placed running the 7th leg on Linné's 2nd team. This meant that I got to run with Sam and Boris. Roommate relay team! It also meant that I had a few hours to spectate before my turn came. I did my best to be loud and conspicuous in support of our 5 teams including an early-morning, whole-club, call and response cheer. Our 1st team was on fire, and had worked it's way into the lead and my team was also making some good moves. We had a reach goal of top 30th and another goal of being the best 2nd club team in the race, and we were within striking distance of these two goals the whole time.
Naturally I was quite nervous before the start, it's an honor to be on the 2nd team and I wanted to prove myself. Luckily, the 7th leg is the one with the least amount of pressure in some ways. It is the last leg with 4 runners, and so the 8th leg runner doesn't go out until all 4 of the 7th leg runners return. Since I was going out 3rd in my group, and Mats was going out 4th, my only responsibility was to do my best to finish ahead of Mats so that I wasn't holding up the show.
I had a strong and focused race, working hard and staying in contact with the map on the somewhat simple course. It wasn't perfect, I lost some time on control 4 when I thought that I saw the spur my control was on over to the right. I went to investigate and then panicked for a moment. Once I recovered things were smooth again. Lost a little more time on 7, when I stopped short on another hill which looked cliffy to me, but then a super quick finish and handed over ahead of Mats.
Mission accomplished.
The rest of the day was spent cheering - our first team suffered a bit of a set back on leg 7, they ended up in 7th overall - my team ended 39th overall, and 2nd of the 2nd teams (not much time separating us from our top 30, and 1st second-team goals). Our third team was the top 3rd team in 82... a really great result. And then I think the 4th team was about 130 or so... but the results are currently down so I can't check. The 5th team was disqualified for a mispunch, but there was a lot of enthusiasm and team spirit for all.