Last weekend (July 9-10) was the inaugural Oregon Prelay, a relay race consisting of 12 person teams starting from Portland (well, actually Tualatin), and ending in Eugene with the last leg ending along Prefontaine’s trail in Eugene.
I did not know too much about this event until about 3 weeks before when I found out I won a free team entry from OregonLive. Thank you OregonLive, RunOregon blog and EPIC Relays! EPIC Relays are the organizers behind the awesome relay event. More information about them can be found here: http://www.epicrelays.com/ and on their blog: http://epicrelays.blogspot.com/
Organization:
The organizers were very helpful and flexible with me when I was trying to assemble my team of 12 runners. Before I knew it, team “Eat More, Run Less” was fully assembled along with mascot, Teddy!
Directions were marked well except for one incident when one of our runners took a wrong turn. Other than that, we the markers which indicated exchanges and van tradeoffs were placed well. My favorite marker was the “One Mile to Go” which after seeing, I strategically picked up my pace. All the volunteers were also helpful and friendly.
Van #1 at the start line ready to go!
The Course:
The course was beautiful! We ran along small roads and witnessed amazing scenery that I never knew existed in Oregon despite living here for 20+ years. Although there were some narrow shoulders along the course which we had to be careful running through, most of our legs seemed pretty safe. I’m sure the directors are working on marking the course better in order to increase safety for next year’s epic race.
A cool stream at a park located at one of the van exchanges
Never knew or heard of the Oregon Garden before, but looks like something to check out in the future
Imagine running against this sunset… amazing!
Results:
Although I initially thought we were going to be a noncompetitive team just going out here to have some fun, I think the competitive runners in us came out when we realized we were the lead team. Since there was a wave start and we had an earlier start time, we were unsure of how far behind the other teams were. With each leg, my split times became faster:
Leg #4: 6.0 Miles (Rating: Hard) – 7:06 min/mile pace
Leg #16: 7.7 Miles (Rating: Very Hard) – 6:56 min/mile pace
Leg #28: 2.4 Miles (Rating: Mild) – 6:05 min/mile pace
Looks like I got a pretty good speed workout in for my last leg. If only I could keep these paces up for a marathon… 🙂
As a team, we ended up placing 1st in our division (Mixed Open) and 3rd overall in a time of 23 hrs 47 minutes 32 seconds.
Thanks Stewart for taking all these great pictures! (maybe next time I won’t be so lazy to take my camera out of my bag)
Overall, it was a very EPIC race, and I had an amazing time participating in it. I am looking forward to it next year, and highly recommend it to everyone reading this.
Audacious Albert's Blog 