The Story of NER - Leg 1

Nice to get one leg under your belt!

Our team started at 10:15 on Saturday. Ben lead off for us, passing the other two teams that we started with by the time he was out of RI, which was about a quarter mile done the road. Van 2 waved goodbye to Van 1 and headed to their first transition area, making a quick stop at Dunkin' Donuts along the way (I was in Van 2, so the remainder of the report is written from that van's perspective). Van 1 headed to drop off Laura B. and Lauren B. at the start of leg 2/4 (the tornadoes that came through MA the week before made 2 legs of the route un-runnable).

I'm sure it was raining by the start of the LBs' legs, but that didn't seem to phase the pair. Mike D. and Erica were next up in that van (legs 3 and 5 also ran together), and they flew through their runs as well. We had just arrived at the transition area when we got a text from Erica that they were on their way to give Gavin the baton (the van had to drive it to make up for the fact that the two legs were eliminated). Figuring she had about an hour, Sumner started warming up. An hour came and went... as did an hour and 15 minutes... and hour and 30 minutes... then we saw a police car drop off two runners who had been lost along the course (neither was Gavin, but we knew something was wrong and were getting nervous that our teammate was wandering the back roads of western MA).

Then, we saw Erica's mom. She brought us some delicious donuts from a local bakery, and Dave immediately inhaled two (I'm not quite sure how, the donuts were huge). We also found out that the van had taken a wrong turn on the way to give Gavin the baton, so he had just stared a few minutes ago. We had to leave the transition area by 2:25 according to the sheet, so Sumner did, flying up the hill and passing two teams. We met up with Van 1 at the next transition area shortly after Sean took off. He ran his leg quick, passed some more teams, and handed me the baton. I managed not to get lost and handed off to James, who ended up passing 8 or so teams in his 8-mile leg. The Duke was next up for us, and I'm pretty sure ran his 8K pace for his 5-mile leg. Dave wrapped up the last leg for Van #2... 5 donuts for 5 miles... but it seemed to work because he passed a whole bunch of people too! Dave handed the baton off the Ben at the top of the final hill of his leg, and we left to give the time sheet to Van #1 (they had left a little bit ahead of us because Ben had a "short" 3ish mile leg)...