A little housekeeping before I continue on the 2011 K100 Relay Report.

I swear in this post… It makes a point. It’s the F word and the S word. Deal.

1. First. Sorry about all my poor grammar. Even for me, the last post makes me look like a blogtard. I've since gone through and fixed all the ‘you’ that should be ‘your’ and all the words that my mind said, but my fingers forgot to type.

2. HUGE apologies to Joyce Jackie. In my defence, I never spent that much time with her, but I did spend the entire day calling her Joyce to everyone else. They all must have thought I was a moron.

Jackie, Did I call you Joyce to your face? I hope not. If so, I am sorry.

I hope I can make it up to you by NOT mentioning that you DNF’d leg 7 with a case of ‘Bad PB Sandwich’ Stomach.

It’s especially bad since we have a friend in common on FB who we both post comments to. Where were you when I needed you Facebook Friend Suggest? Hmmm? Anton Krupica should be my Friend and not Joyce Jackie? Did you also notice that on the way to the race I made Twitter friends with her, and STILL got her name wrong all day! 

Anyway.

3. I want to yammer on about my experience at the race. All the training woes aside, I loved all of it. It’s a little nerve racking (sp) running on a team that you never met before. My personality enables it to look easy, but have visions of high school all over again (hey guys, whatcha talking about? Hey guys, maybe I can come along this weekend, oh you aren’t doing anything this weekend again? oh, ok… )

Turns out everyone is pretty awesome. Even Clint, Dan and Joyce Jackie, who were nice enough to humor me as I ooohed and aaaahed about the course. Probably a few eye rolls at the expense of this noob, but I can take it. Get to know me and you’ll realize I ALWAYS ohh and ahh about cool shit.

I met Dan briefly. Apparently he had an epic hard run in Leg 10. I hope one of my teammates, or Dan can fill me in on the details so I can tell the internet. I did enjoy Kraigs company for a good part of the day and I did see him get the hand off from Susan, but still need his report. Dean and Joel were cool (Father and son). Dean has organized this team for a few years, and Joel is a sacrificial lamb that runs Leg 6 each year (1200’ of elevation drop in 9kms, he is young and recovers in a couple days where the rest of us would be broken for weeks). I had the pleasure of supporting Susan who is a pretty cool chick. You’ll meet more of them in Part 2 of the Race report. Anita was great and ambitious and ran a really tough leg.

Edit: Dan reported on his Leg 10. I have a bit of a hard time feeling bad for him. He ran a 18k muddy hilly trail in 1:18. I will include his email in Part two of the race report.

Ok. I was really upsetting myself over this run. It a really big all day commitment (weekend for some) that you really can’t take lightly, competitive or hobby runners. It got to the point of almost bailing altogether, but my nature wouldn’t allow me to do this. So what did I do? I decided on a ‘Fuck it’ attitude and just decide to let the chips fall where they may.

I committed fully to the run, to the support, and to the event. I think that was the key. Fuck it, I am going to leave at 4am and get there for Joanne and Daren. Fuck it, I am going to restock my amazing photo supply with pictures of this run and the scenery surrounding it, Fuck it, I am going to run the shit out of my leg and if I collapse trying, so be it. Fuck it, I am here I might as well enjoy myself.

Success on all fronts. It was pretty cool. I don’t spend entire Saturdays away from my family much, and that was in the back of my mind too. Traci is a stay at home mom and has full time ‘with child’ job. She loves every minute, but relies on me to enjoy some ‘Sausage party’ bonding with the me and the boy on the weekends so she can have some quality quite time (or just work on the laundry with out the ‘Why’ machine under foot all the time). I figured I was out there, might as well give my all to the event.

Speaking of the event again. The team concept is pretty foreign to a runner for the most part, but you can tell a lot of the teams have been doing this race for a LONG time and really enjoy this day to the fullest. I spoke to a woman at one point who has run all the legs at least once and is now on her second go-round. You can tell the ones that make this one of their annual goal races. They are the ones who dress up, travel together in a van, cheer relentlessly for anyone running (and cheer harder for those who are walking), the ones who paint their support vehicles and honk at everything! Teams like these ladies.

It was cool because later I had them as a cheering squad! Barefoot rules. You can be a slow, out of shape runner, and still get an entire race of people cheering for you. I smile and say thank you and tell them to google Barefoot Neil Z as they might be on the internet that night!

Check out this video I made of the start, middle and end of my leg. The group above actually made up a cheer for me.

4. My feet. My feet are great. 14kms, no matter the hills, are just fine. 14kms for me now is very doable under any circumstance, as this race proved. Even though it was uphill for most of the leg, it was still just 14kms. Remember back on  May 1st? I ran 31kms barefoot, so this was nothing. That was my mindset, that it’s only 14kms and I can do this in my sleep. People are still amazed by my bare feet too.  The most common questions was “Don’t your feet hurt?”, nope, its everything but my feet, haha. I guess people are amazed still, especially when I do out of the norm races like this one. Many of the main races in Calgary, well they kind of expect me there now…

It surprises me a bit, still that people are surprised with  my barefeet. I guess I may be the only one who follows it. Like really, if you didn’t barefoot yourself, why would you pay attention to any media on it. I like that I am still a novelty, I have met the most amazing people because I run sans shoes.

5. I blame the running room for my lack of training commitment. If they were a little more open minded to my desire to inspire (hehe, it rhymes), I would still have a club to run at in south Calgary. It’s just very inconvenient to head into the city from the far out there suburbs for a 1/2 hour run with a different group. When we sell the house and move into the city again I think that will all change. I get MANY options of running clubs/ groups. Now who wants me, and do you have an indoor running track that allows barefoot? (MRU, Oval) . I will qualify tho, that getting kicked out of the RR is what launched this mildly popular blog and all the good stuff that came along with it…

6. Thanks you so much to GUEnergy who sent me a big bag of GU gels for everyone on the run, and for that matter, thanks to everyone who supports my running, especially my family. Couldn’t do it with out you. Tuesday is Traci and my 14th anniversary! Love you Sweetie! Here is one of her favorite photos I have taken…

7. VOTE FOR ME! I can win cyber cash! If you like the picture, go to this Fathers Day facebook contest at PlanetGear.com and click VOTE! it’s easy, so do it for me!