(Originally published September 21, 2011)
[Some people think of biking across the state in RAGBRAI as a challenge, but how hard can that be? I mean, those people are on wheels! And they can coast down hills! For those looking for a real challenge Relay Iowa offers the opportunity to run 340 miles across the state. This is part two of a two part series by guest writer Tim Bergan, who along with three other central Iowa runners, made their way relay-style across the state over the course of a couple days this past June. Because that was too easy for them they threw in a few quick miles in Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Illinois. Read Part 1 here.]
...With roughly 140 miles completed, we “only” had 200 to go. I started my seventh leg of Relay Iowa as it started to get light on Saturday morning. With each of us now having slept for an hour or two, we were back to doing five mile runs and mine was great. It was cool, the sun was rising, and it was one of those runs that remind me why I run. Chuck once again followed me and Chip took us through Jewell. Matt got us through Ellsworth (though it’s not quite the halfway point, Ellsworth feels like the halfway point, since it is where we cross Interstate 35), where a nice breakfast provided by the relay organizer awaited us. Ed, Shelley, Chip, and Chuck ate while I crewed Matt.
Once Matt finished his run, I took over for my eighth time out the door and onto the road. Matt returned to Ellsworth to eat. I planned on running six miles, but it ended up being closer to seven and a half as Chuck and Shelley missed a turn and kept going east while I turned at Radcliffe (where I encountered two dogs who seemed intent on biting me but settled for standing in the middle of the road barking at me) and was running north. Ed, Matt, and Chip found me, called Chuck and Shelley, and they back-tracked and caught up to us. Chuck took over and I ate the breakfast the team had brought for me. We sat around for awhile and then decided to track down Chuck. Apparently his poor navigation skills were not limited to misdirecting Shelley in the minivan since he was not where we expected him to be. After a bit of searching, Shelley found him and we got headed back in the right direction. Chip and Matt followed with relatively nondescript runs.
My next run took me through Eldora and up a huge hill east of there that I ran in 2010 as well. Chuck’s run went well, but Chip was beginning to feel the effects of the effort we had put forth so far. His right achilles was starting to hurt and he was having trouble flushing the lactate acid from his body. Uh oh! Having only a four person team was beginning to catch up to us. Matt, though, was feeling fine (a couple ibuprofen helped) and had a magic run through Grundy Center. He says it felt like he was running downhill the whole time though he had two big uphills at the end.
Run number ten found me on the Pioneer trail (which paralleled Highway 175) passing through Morrison. The trail was a welcome relief from dodging cars on the highway and provided some shade. Though it was still cool, the shade felt good. Chuck ran through Reinbeck where there were no sidewalks or shoulder on the road. No big deal, but at this stage (we’ve now been running for over 31 hours), he found himself wondering “why?”. Chip was now in pain, tired, struggling with fluid/nutrition management, had digestion problems, and was thinking “Pull me out coach!” In spite of this, he put in four miles until Matt took over and ran eight that got us east of Hudson.
I took over for Matt and put in six miles. With the course staying south of Waterloo this year, we avoided repeating some excitement we had in 2010. It’s a story for another day, but let’s just note that it included a lost runner of ours, a very unsafe part of downtown Waterloo, and the question of “Why’s your ass flashing?” No such adventure this year as we were running the rural (rather than urban) area around Waterloo and at a much earlier time. As I finished this run, I felt crappy. When we met Joe and Margot Stover and Matt's wife Sandy, who were joining us to help crew, I couldn't stop shivering in the cool (but not cold) outdoors. I had to return to the van and warm up. Not a good sign with still well over 100 miles to go. Chuck plugged through his five miles getting us through Washburn, we skipped Chip in the rotation (who was headed with Shelley to my sister’s in Independence to sleep and eat some solid food), and Matt took over for six miles only an hour and forty-five minutes after finishing his eight mile run and got us east of Gilbertville.
Run number twelve came up quick for me as well with Chip out of the rotation. I was still feeling crappy, but managed to get down some food and fluids and get back out the door. Surprisingly, I actually felt good while running. There were three memorable things about this run. First, I witnessed a beautiful Iowa sunset over the Iowa farm fields as I ran north toward old Highway 20. Second, this run took me over last year's mileage total and we still had something like 100 miles to go. Third, when I crossed the "new" Highway 20, it took a lot of mental toughness to avoid taking the on ramp toward Dubuque as it was only 81 miles on the four-lane "new" highway versus more than 100 on the "old" highway which the course followed. Chuck followed me and fought through his run which took us through Jesup. While he didn’t necessarily feel bad, he struggled with maintaining a good pace and had to alternate running with walking. Great. We now had three of the four of us struggling. Matt again did more than his share and ran six miles which got us to Independence, where the locals were having a pretty good time at the rocking street dance. After his run, he called sleeping princess Shelley to get her and Chip back with the team.
After my previous run, I had trouble ingesting fluids and food. I lay on the couch in the RV feeling like total horse crap. Joe was helping crew us at this point. Not knowing him and needing a mental diversion, I started peppering him with questions about his work (and actually was somehow able to remember most of his answers). We were still on our three-man rotation, so I only had about an hour and a half to recover and re-fuel. Finally, about 15 minutes prior to running, I was able to get down some orange slices (the candy, not the fruit) which worked miracles. I followed it with yogurt, an actual orange, some salty snacks, water, and Coke. I started feeling a bit better as I headed out the door of the RV. My run was good and as I finished, I had my energy back. I quickly consumed food and fluids. Feeling much better, I suddenly turned into an amped-up, sleep-deprived comedian. I'm sure Joe had to be wondering what he had gotten himself into. An hour earlier, I looked and sounded like death warmed over and now I was a stand-up comedy act. Chuck, who was still struggling with getting his system back to normal, put in three miles (getting us to Winthrop) and then it was on to Matt again since Chip was not yet back from my sister’s. After Matt put in his five, Chip was back. And when I say he was back, he was really back. While Ed, Chuck, and Matt slept in the RV (Joe and Margot had left at this point), I joined Shelley and Sandy in the minivan. I was on call to take over when Chip could no longer run. We were hoping to get five miles out of him. Almost eleven miles later, in Manchester, Chip finally turned it over to me.
I took off on my fourteenth run at about 2:30 Sunday morning. We were in my childhood stomping grounds now – fifteen miles from Edgewood, the town I grew up in. It was 55 degrees – unbelievably cool mid-June Iowa weather. I finished and Chuck took over. After resting a bit, Shelley and I decided to catch up to the RV. Not so fast, though. We had a dead battery. We had to call Ed to come give us a jump start. Thank goodness for two vehicles. Chuck was still not back to normal and ran just three miles for us. Matt, who got over an hour and a half of sleep while Chip and I were running, put in eight plus miles to get us through Earlville to Dyersville. Chip took over, and apparently wanted to see the Field of Dreams again this year (we detoured to it last year, ran around the bases, and took pictures), since he ran there rather than staying on the relay route. After hunting him down, we got back on track.
I hit the road again for another run. By this time, we’ve lost track of how many times we’ve run, how far we’ve run, and how much we still have to run. About all that we know is that daylight has returned to northeast Iowa and we’ve made it through the toughest part of the relay. We had planned on doing ten mile runs again on Saturday night, but with Chip out and Chuck and me feeling like crap, that just didn’t happen. Instead we did what we had to do to get through the night and keep putting miles behind us. I was operating on a grand total of two hours of sleep since Friday morning and the rest of the gang didn’t get much more. I guess two hours is better than none. I ran some serious hills northeast of Dyersville, Chuck got us through Farley, Matt ran through Epworth, and Chip took over. I think one of the last things Chip said in the RV before this run was, "I know this sounds crazy but my achilles hurts when I go downhill, so I'll be glad to take the uphills". Long story short, this leg was a long downhill descent to the base of Potter Hill. Chip made a comment along the lines of, “it felt like my achilles was going to tear off.” General icing followed.
Well, Chip made it to the base of Potter Hill, which meant, yep, I had to make it up Potter Hill. I told the gang that I hadn’t walked a step of this relay to this point and I wasn’t about to start now, but I also didn’t know if I could make it to the top of this mile long monster with an average grade of 6% (some sections much steeper than that) without slowing to a walk. We solved the problem by triple-teaming it – I ran a third, Chuck ran a third, and Matt topped it. I picked up again from there and continued our trek toward Dubuque. Chuck, Matt, and Chip all followed with runs, getting us through Asbury. By now, none of us were doing five mile legs any more. The combination of miles, hills, and lack of sleep had us running two to four miles each at this point.
My next leg was two miles along Asbury Road in Dubuque. Again familiar territory, since I graduated from Loras College. About this time, a driver who had trouble understanding the four letters of S-T-O-P on the sign he was approaching almost hit me right in front of Bill Raine, the race director. By this point, tired and maybe even a little cranky, I didn't really have a sense of humor about it so I slapped the back of the car as it went by. I had to laugh as I ran by Bill and he observed, “It would kind of suck to run 335 miles and then get hit by a car five measly miles from the finish.” Chuck got us to the dog track, where we had the RV. All four of us gathered together and walked the remaining half mile toward the finish in Riverview Park with Ed, Shelley, and Sandy. About 100 feet from the finish, the four DUMMIES and Ed picked it up to a tortoise-like pace and crossed the finish line with what appeared to be some kind of zombie attempt at running. None of us were moving particularly fluidly at that point. Fifty-one hours ten minutes and 340 miles from the Sergeant Floyd Monument in Sioux City, we were done with the Relay Iowa portion of our run. We lay in the grass at the finish while Wisconsin and Illinois still loomed if we were going to complete the five states portion of this adventure. Continuing to run did not exactly sound enticing and it was mentally tough to get going again, since it really felt like we should be done when we crossed the Relay Iowa finish line.
After resting for a bit, we had Shelley shuttle us to the Highway 151 bridge over the mighty Mississippi River. There is a wide shoulder on the divided highway bridge where we crawled out of the van. The noise and rush of air from the vehicles screaming past us was unnerving as we watched an old stern-wheeler cruising upriver below us. Shelley leap-frogged us with the minivan and walked back to meet us on the Wisconsin side of the river. With the four of us now in our fourth state, Matt began a solo run up the long hill past the big Wisconsin sign to the first exit ramp and continued to ascend to Highway 35. The rest of the DUMMIES met him at the Illinois border where we walked the last few steps to complete our mega-event – one run, four guys, five states, one weekend.
For anybody interested in joining us for the 2012 version of Relay Iowa (yes, we’re doing it again – we are idiots after all), it’s being run June 8-10, once again from Sioux City to Dubuque. More information is available at the relay website of http://relayia.org/.
[Thanks so much to Tim and the rest of the DUMMIES for sharing their story. Relay events such as Hood to Coast and the Ragnar series are growing in popularity because they can be so much fun. However, most teams are smart enough to run these with more than four people and few of these relays are more than 200 miles in length.]
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