GMR

This past weekend was the Green Mountain Relay.  The Green Mountain Relay is a 200-mile relay race from Jeffersonville, Vermont to North Bennington, Vermont with the majority of it being run on scenic Route 100.  I was running as part of team of 8 people.  

Friday night we met up and left at about 7.30pm, hoping to make it to South Burlington by 11ish, where we would be spending the night, getting up at 5am for a 6.30 race start.  At about 8.30, about 20 miles into my trip, the transmission on my car went to hell.  I was no longer able to drive 75mph - my car was only able to go about 40 mph, and was shaking violently.  This was not good.  I threw the hazards on and was able to get off at the next exit and call the other two drivers to explain my situation.  One of the other cars was ahead of me on the highway and was able to turn around and pick up my third passenger.  Gina and I would attempt to drive my car home.  Well, fortunately for the O/D button (drive override), I was able to make it home driving in 4th gear.  5th gear didn't work and at low speeds, the car would shake.  So, we made it back to Boston, hopped in Gina's car and made it up to South Burlington at 1.30AM.  It was going to be a long weekend.

After 3 hours of sleep on a hotel floor, I wiped the dried spunk out of my eyes, got a few minutes in the bathroom, and was off for a 45 minute drive to Jeffersonville, Vermont to begin the relay.  I would be running 5 legs:  Leg #3 (7.9 miles) would be run at about 8AM Saturday, followed by Leg #11 (9.9 miles) at 4PM on Saturday, followed by Leg #19 (6.6 miles) at 10PM on Saturday, followed by Leg #27 (4.4 miles) at 4AM Sunday, with my last leg #35 (4.7 miles) at 10AM on Sunday.  I got 0 hours of sleep on Saturday, and one shitty hour of van sleep on Sunday at about 7-8AM.  Overall, our team did pretty well, and I was happy with my times considering my lack of serious training.  (Averaged about a 7:10 mile for 33 miles which included a slow last leg where I paced an ultra team that we became friends with after running the first 150 miles with them).

The hardest thing about the race was doing it on a lack of sleep.  There was only one stretch in Leg #27 (my 4th leg) that I had significant pain, and that was when I first got passed and tried to stay with the guy.  He was running close to a 6.30 mile I think, and at that point I was not going to be keeping up with him.  Other than the fact that I now have to deal with a broken transmission, it was a very enjoyable weekend.  (If anyone wants to steal my car, I'll leave the keys in it with a full tank.  Just make sure I don't find it).

Here are some pictures:

This is a bowl of soup I purchased at Exchange #6 near Stowe at the Green Mountain Coffee Visitor Center.  I thought I was able to eat this bowl of soup in the back of a moving van on bumpy roads.  I failed miserably.  (Mushroom Barley, in case you were wondering).

This bear died of natural causes.  Gunshot.

This is a nice looking barn.

This is taken from the bridge that is at the base of the Killington Skyeship (gondola) that crosses Rt-100.  Taken at sundown.  That car was clocked at 126mph!

This past weekend was my 15th high school reunion.  I didn't go.  We didn't have a 5-year or 10-year reunion, so this would have been my first chance to reconnect with some of my old classmates.  I have stayed in contact with a few, and thanks to Facebook, I am up to date with the mundane details of many of their lives.  I only graduated with 85 or so people.  What would you answer if I asked you what the chances are of one of my former classmates having a sex change?  If you answered "100 %", you'd be correct.  This seemed to have been the highlight of the night.  I mean, how do you top this?  

Instead of going to a class reunion, I celebrated Greg's dad's 60th birthday party.  One of the better gifts he got was this blow up doll.  The dog had a real go with her, and we didn't even stuff pulled pork up her rear end like we wanted to.

This coming weekend is the big relay race up in Vermont.  I am on a team with 7 others and we basically have to run the entire length of Vermont - 200 miles.  I am in charge of running 5 legs totaling 33 miles.  It is going to be interesting, considering the farthest I've run in the last 6 months is 9 miles.  

It has been nearly three weeks since I last updated my blog and I have recently taken some heat for it.  Last week I logged on and wrote some stuff, but got side tracked and ended up having a 4th beer instead.  Tonight I had one beer.  Now I'm having a little bourbon (Eagle Rare).

What have I been up to in the last week?  Well, two weeks ago Gina and I went up to New Hampshire and did some camping and hiking.  We also drove up to the top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire where I got a chance to play with my new camera.  The temperature up top was 34 degrees, with a 60 mph wind.  This is a picture of the train coming up the mountain.  If you look real closely, you can see the train conductor text messaging.

Gina and I like to play a little game when we drive around northern New England.  Well, I guess I wouldn't call it a game.  We look for moose.  Sometimes we look for bear too.  I've only seen a moose once and it was up in Maine when I was 12.  Well, on the way home from New Hampshire two weeks ago I saw my first bear.  He was in between I-93 N and I-93 S and looked a little like this:

Last week, our softball team suffered our first loss of the season, 14-13.  I spent a few innings coaching third base, which is ironic because I usually don't know how many outs there are which makes me one of the least qualified people to coach third base.  But, I coach third base a lot, because it makes me feel like I am a coach and I've always deep down wanted to be a coach of something.  Also, it increases my chances by 90% of taking a line-drive to the nut-sack and that would surely give me some good blogging material.  I noticed two things while coaching third base last week.  1)  We can't approach the good teams the same way we do the bad.  While we can run all day on the bad teams, the good teams actually have players capable of making plays.  This is especially true with less than two outs.  2) If this were our pitcher, we would probably average more than 0.8 fans/game: 

This past weekend I did some running.  I ran 9 miles on Friday night, 7 miles on Saturday morning, and another 9 miles on Sunday afternoon.  The hardest one was on Sunday, both physically and emotionally.  Physically I was tired from the two previous days.  I had also eaten a pork sandwich (from Hi-Rise Bakery) about three hours prior.  The sandwich is called a Nat Queen Cool and is my new favorite.  Anyways, it was sitting in my stomach and I almost lost it.  At mile 7, I came across an injured baby rabbit.  It looked to have gotten hit by a bicycle and was suffering on the bike path.  It was clearly going to die.  I moved it to the side, and then decided to put it out of it's misery by stomping on it 3 times.  It was pretty gross, and didn't make me feel to good.

Speaking of not making me feel too good, I saw this band in Copenhagen in 1998.  Do any of you know who it is?  Whoever can name them first can pick my next blog topic.