2011 Wasatch Back Relay leg 11 Something only an idiot would try unless they were escaping some sort of bizarre flood that had waters rising up to 6,000 feet above sea level. 3 miles up Trapper's Loop road in Huntsville, UT with an elevation gain of just under 1,000 feet. Even though my pace was slow, 11:11, I am logging these as fast miles because I was running as fast as I could. This run started out flat and I was able to catch my first roadkill about 200 yards out of the gate. It then turned uphill. As I turned onto Trapper's Loop road, I was supposed to cross over to the right side of the road, but the two people in front of me turned and ran up the left side. I was confused and followed them, but the traffic cones were set up to give us a lane on the right side of the road. After a while, I decided I needed to be over there and ran over when there was a break in traffic. I just tried to steadily climb the road. There was a girl in front of me quite a ways that I focused on catching. She eventually caught up to another girl and they were running together when I caught up to them somewhere around mile 2. I stayed just behind them for a while because it was too hard to go around them. I eventually ran between them and left them behind. It took a lot of mental power to keep running up--and while the last mile marker on a Ragnar Relay leg is always a welcome sight, it didn't feel like I was anywhere near the end of this one when I came to it. On my last mile I kept looking at my watch hoping to make better progress. I wanted to be done. Then I decided to figure out the distance between traffic cones--which was about .05 miles--and knew that I had 6 left to go. At some point, towards the end, a woman passed me. When I got in sight of the finish line I knew I could finish strong and I picked up my pace to pass her back just before the end. After the run was over, I saw a girl walking up towards her van exhausted and crying. I pointed at her and told my teammates, "She feels like I do." That was probably the most difficult run I had ever done at that point in my life, but it felt good to look back down to the valley and see what I had done. Just the facts
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