Pace Comparisons

This is just what I played with over the weekend.

Enjoy!

Beach to Bay 2009

<-Fred at the finish!

Yesterday, May 16, was Armed Forces Day, a clear indicator that there was yet another running of the Beach to Bay Relay Marathon in Corpus Christi, Texas, and there was, and Team Mid-Texas Symphony was there. It was the fourth time we have run this relay, the 34th running overall for what is now regarded as the largest running relay in the country.

It was back in 2006 that we first fielded a team of runners from the Mid-Texas Symphony. At that time, none of us had any experience running relays. In fact, none of us was at all convinced that this team thing was going to amount to anything. To our delight and surprise, we had a great time, learning lessons we hadn't anticipated about teamwork and the thrill of succeeding as a group. To varied degrees, we each still devote a lot of our energies to the individual 10Ks, half-marathons, marathons and triathlons. But since that first team experience in 2006 we have always relished the relay opportunities - the Beach to Bays and the Texas Independence Relays. If you have never run as part of a team, take it from us that you ought to give it a try.
(Fred, Liz, me, Zenna and Tony)

Each year we have run the B2B there have been slightly different personnel. Runners move away, runners aren't free or, in the case of this year, runners sustain injuries in their training. The core of our Mid-Texas Symphony team, those of us who have run all four, is Yours Truly (James Baker) and Liz Pittel. I also give credit to my sister Brenda Jackson, who has been our designated Wrunner Wrangler over the 4 years of B2B. This year's reconfiguration began with replacing Dorian Ramirez, who was running on a hot and fast women's masters team. I asked my step-daughter Zenna James if she would run with us and she said yes. Next came the misfortune of an Achilles tendon injury to Steve Hager (get well soon, Steve). This gave me the opportunity to call on Tony Hinojosa, Zenna's boyfriend. Tony and Zenna are a couple of great young people. They work as hard or harder than anyone I know going to school and holding down full time jobs at a restaurant. No wonder they have a little trouble carving out time to run. We all know how important it was early on as runners to get encouragement from already motivated runners. I am thankful for the help I have gotten and I see the encouragement I offer to Zenna and Tony as paying back, or maybe even paying forward. Glad you guys had a good time with B2B and I hope it's the nudge you need to keep running. This is a life investment we are making; besides, it's fun.


(Tony, Zenna and me)

Finally, Jonathon Hager, our fastest runner, wrote and told me he couldn't get off to run with us in Corpus. Thanks to Dorian, I was put in touch with Jennifer Hilliard, a Corpus runner. Thanks to Jennifer, I was put in touch with Carina Duffy, from San Antonio, who was looking for a team. She was a perfect fit. Thanks to everyone who helped me fill that final slot on the team and thanks to everyone who ultimately ran with us.

I love this race. There are fast runners, slow runners, in between runners, in all shapes and sizes. The race has grown in popularity such that this year there were almost 2000 teams. Of these, 1851 teams finished. We have always run in the Odds and Ends category, meaning we have 6 runners (age and sex are meaningless). There has always been such variation in our ages that we don't qualify as a masters team although we are usually majority over 40 years of age. This year we could have run as a mixed team (3 women, 3 men) but it seemed easier to just stay put in Odds and Ends. That division contained 784 teams this year; we finished in 114th place with a time of 4:07:50, putting us in the upper 17% of our division. We were 451st overall. Not bad, considering that the day was hot and super humid. Almost everyone I talked to remarked on how tough the conditions were. But as I say, I like this race, and one of the things I like a lot about it is that runners come to have a good time. They don't let the conditions sour them on the experience. That is certainly reflected by one runner I talked to. As I rode in the back of a pickup truck from the end of my leg 2 to the Flour Bluff parking lot (the official buses were a bit overburdened) the half dozen runners compared notes on how many times they had run B2B. There was a newbie and then others like me who were still relative newcomers. Not so one gentleman who said this one was his 24th, testament to the sustained lure of B2B. I'm 60 now, but I sure hope I can give that gentleman a run for his money. Let's see, Good Lord willing, I will run my 24th B2B when I am 80. How about it, Zenna, Tony, Fred, Liz? Let's keep this team running long and strong.