The 1998 Lake Winnepesaukee Relay can best be described as a day of
fluctuating fortunes for the CRC Mixed Open team. We went into the race as
defenders of the 1997 mixed open title, hoping to repeat but knowing that
much depended on the strength of our competition. This factor became
readily apparent in leg 1, when Bruce Davie's 63:56 split, which placed us
12th overall, proved to be about 6 minutes slower than the time of the
leading mixed open runner. However, Jim Thomson was able to overhaul the
second runner on that team, putting us briefly into the lead. Unbeknownst to
Jim, one of only 2 men who passed him on his leg was on another mixed open
team, so by the time Steve Wukitch took the baton we were back in second.
The team now in the lead would prove to be our competition for the rest of
the day.
A few miles into his leg, Steve caught his man, and by the end of leg 3 we
had almost a 4 minute lead. Jodi Crofut ran a strong 4th leg to maintain
our position before handing off to Missy Mendel. Running an 11 mile leg
that is much tougher than widely believed, Missy was up against a man from
the other team, and by the time Misssy handed off to Kerry Kirkendall we
were 2 minutes out of first.
Showing great courage in the face of a plantar fascia injury, Kerry managed
to get us back level with our competition, who were rumored to have taken a
detour on leg 6. (They claimed it cost them several minutes, but who can
know? In any case, it is well known that Winnepesaukee is won and lost on
logistics.) To our considerable dismay, however, Dana Laird found herself
competing against yet another man on the 8.5 mile leg 7. How could this
happen, we asked? By a process of elimination we determined that our
competitors must have run a woman on leg 1, and a good one at that. But
what rational team would run a woman on leg 1, arguably the toughest leg on
the course? Could they possible have run 5 men? Scenes of protest and ugly
confrontation began to flash before our eyes (well, the captain's eyes, at
least). The answer, as it turned out, is that you run a woman on the first
leg if that woman is a 2:47 marathoner. We learned this when we bumped into
the leading team and met said woman at the last exchange point. Their man
on leg 7 opened up a 12 minute lead, which even Peter could not close - in
spite of running the 3rd fastest time of the day out of 150 runners on leg
8. Peter left nothing on the table, closing the gap to 7 minutes, and
bringing us home in a time of 7:06.06, a time that would have been good for
first place last year. Our 18th place overall was an improvement of 3
places on last year.
While it was a disappointment not to repeat, we were, on the day, beaten by
a stronger team. Next year, perhaps, we'll be back with no injured runners
and another year of experience under our belts to try to regain our title.
