*This race recap is the first in a series written by runners from the winning team (DiMarco Workhorse III) of the 2021 GAP Relay (150 miles from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD). It was written by Steve Garand, he is a 60 year old ultra marathoner who resides in the City of Pittsburgh.
My last relay race was a quarter mile sprint holding a baton in a 4 by 440-yard relay on a cinder track in high school some 45 years ago. Rubber tracks and meters were not yet invented.
OK, maybe meters existed in some foreign country, but one was never spotted in my home state of Connecticut.
Running the Gap Relay was totally different, except for the distinct lack of the metric
system. Instead of 1 mile, we had 150. The exchanges were not in the same spot each run but instead kept moving farther apart and harder to find for the ever more sleep deprived drivers.
As time wore on, Murphy’s Law ruled the night. Anything that could go wrong, did. Even things that could not fail managed to find a way. It became apparent this was not a race against other teams or even against ourselves. This was a race against Murphy, and it was getting personal.
Now it’s been my experience when mixing mistakes, sleep deprivation, exhaustion,
darkness, confusion, bad roads, bad directions, miscommunication, injuries, and foul weather you typically end up with a simmering pot of blaming stew. To my pleasant surprise, everyone pulled together and gave every ounce of what they had to constantly keep a runner moving from the starting line in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to the finish line in Cumberland Maryland, some 150 miles away. Not a single complaint was heard, or as the old song goes, not a discouraging word.
When things fell apart, everyone reached in and put it back together as best they could.
After countless times lost and going to the wrong exchange, we ended up one section farther than intended, with a runner quickly approaching the now deserted exchange. Not a moment was lost to frustration or blame. Someone grabbed a map, another calculated the runner estimated arrival time, yet another started entering the coordinates for the correct location.
When the driver lurched the van back onto the road, someone commented matter-of-factly, it’s going to be close. It was always close but somehow everyone pulled together and stayed a half step ahead of Murphy.
Elijah, Jim, Eric, and Brett were amazing runners who set a blistering pace and seemed to go faster on each successive run. Despite Elijah running the London Marathon 2 weeks prior, then the Boston Marathon 4 days prior in 2 hours and 49 minutes, he ran at his top speed through his sections, including the hardest and most dreaded uphill 11.5-mile climb. Scott, who organized the event and graciously paid for everything for everyone, experienced a catastrophic anatomy failure a mile before the end of his second run. To keep the running train going, he
spent the next 8 minutes painfully limping and mostly running with only one remaining good leg until he arrived at the exchange point. Tony’s knee was causing him to limp after his second run, but he gritted out his last run with everything he had. Mike let out a loud F bomb at the start of his second run. It turns out he twisted his ankle stepping on a rut in the night’s darkness. Mike still finished the run and another later on with said twisted ankle. No less amazing were the drivers of each of 2 vans. We could run and rest, but they had no such luxury.
Working the entire time under a great deal of stress, getting us to the next exchange through rough back roads with marginal directions and no sleep. Somehow, they always got us where we needed to go and by when we had to be there.
Jim crossed the finish line 150 miles from where Mike stood some 16 hours and 40
minutes earlier. The second-place team, alumni runners from Saint Vincent College with a combined average age of about half of ours, arrived an hour and 15 minutes later. They led the race by 5 minutes in the first 10 miles until our fast guys went after them and put them 5 minutes behind us. They came roaring back around mid-race and caught up with us until we sicked our fast guys on them again. The boys, as we fondly referred to them, fell steadily behind us for the remainder of the race.
It’s fun to get caught up in the struggle of the race, especially surrounded by such talent and selfless cooperation as this team showed. My second run, alone for 9 miles in the ink black woods of the Pennsylvania forest, however helped put things in perspective. With only a headlamp to cut through the pitch-black night, I noticed glowing eyes staring from the enveloping woods. The deeper and more isolated I ran down the trail, the more eyes seemed to appear. It’s as if nature itself was patiently watching and waiting as I struggled by, reminding me where I came from and will return to again.
For now, I’m content, given an opportunity to run a crazy race with great people in an
amazing display of selfless cooperation. Most important though is the fact we kicked those boys’ butts by over an hour! Way to go team ‘DiMarco Workhouse III’.
N of 1 Running 