I made it... owww... I made it... owww... I ma... zzzzzzzzz.
Everyone was pretty tired by this point, and I think the smell of Icy Hot and Biofreeze pretty much masked everything else. The only people left on the roads were either runners or coming home from the bar, and I'm not sure who was driving worse! We pretty much drove the course to make it to the next van-to-van transition area.... some of the hills looked pretty brutal and it was starting to rain again. We got text messages from Van 1 letting us know how everyone was doing (everyone was still running fast) and how many teams they had passed. I think Van 2 pretty much passed out once we made it to the transition area. A bit later (probably like an hour or so), the rain woke us up. Other vans had started to arrive, Sumner got a text saying Erica was running (poor Erica) and they were expecting her soon. They asked us to try and get a hold of the race director and let her know that we would probably be finishing sooner than we had anticipated (we had no idea what our pace would be since we had needed to reshuffle our team, and a few had never run a 10K). This is where the fun began.
We did get through to a very panicked raced director (she had probably been up all night). Our team, and at least a few others were running too fast and the gate would not be opened. She told us to wait to 7:30 to start, which we didn't think would be a problem unless Gavin ran inhumanly fast. Then we realized that she thought Gavin's leg was the start of our van... more frantic phone calls and text messages... Gavin and another runner had just left. As I was dialing the race director's number, my phone rang... it was the race director telling me what I was about to tell her. We eventually resolved that we should wait for at least one other team to come through before we started our final leg. Gavin finished, fast, freezing cold, and hungry. We waved goodbye to van 1 (they looked exhausted, but excited to be done, and happy with what they had accomplished). A while later, another team crossed the line, and Sumner took off after them.
The final legs for van 2 were pretty uneventful. Everyone ran fast, James battled quite the head wind for most of his leg, and The Duke demonstrated how real runners stretch (unfortunately, the girls at the beach did not seem to notice that a race was going on). At last Dave got the baton, and took off for the finish line. We met Van 1 at the post office where the buses would be picking us up to head to the finish line. They were looking slightly refreshed owing to the large cups of coffee they were all holding (wow... it had been over a day since my last cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts), and it was good to see them all again and talk versus text them everything! We piled on to a bus, saw Dave at some point along the course, and then rolled up to the finish. The announcer from the day before was there, and we told him it seemed like ages ago since we saw him in RI (but we did finally make it to ME as promised). We requested that he play some "running related" song, and walked a bit down the hill to cheer Dave on.
A few minutes later, we spotted an orange singlet. We all started yelling and jumping up and down as much as we could manage, and the music suddenly switched to Eye of the Tiger. Dave powered up the hill (those 8 donuts sure paid off), and through the finish line. WE DID IT! Then, we made our way down to the rocky beach, and Dave and The Duke managed to get in the water, which was basically equivalent to taking an ice bath. We had some delicious lobster rolls, talked to the race director a bit (she gave me a high-five with a terrified look on her face after I sang "we did it we did it we did it wahooo"), cheered on the teams that finished second and third, and then headed back to the vans for our long drive home...
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