Last Saturday, two teams from the San Marcos Runners Club hit the road and ran the Beach to Bay Marathon Relay.
While neither team competed for top prize money, they did have a close competition between themselves. The team of “Fiesta On Foot” was composed of Laura Mason, Elma Minor, David Alexander, Liesela Austin, Charlene Martinez and Elizabeth Wills. The second team, “Sandy Soles,” had Mike Scholz, Dana Power, Paul Power, Margaret Collins, Kathleen Seal and Ron Seal. “Fiesta On Foot” finished 1,033rd out of 2,212 teams, and Sandy Soles came in at 1,279th out of 2,212.
In the past years, the cap for the number of teams was between 1,000 and 1,600 teams. This year the cap was set at 2,400 teams. Imagine teams of six runners, and then trying to have 2,400 methods of transportation trying to all converge at the various pick-up points.
A good example was Laura Mason, who ran the first leg on the beach, and was in the car to begin the pick-up process, but was stuck in the car for 4 1/2 hours trying to get to the causeway and to the finish area downtown. It quickly became apparent that the Corpus Christi infrastructure for traffic was not built to handle this type of load.
As explained to me by David Alexander, another factor was that the weatherman mentioned that the rain would be gone by Friday night. Anyone who has planned a big event and has put faith in the accuracy of a weatherman knows what the outcome turned out to be. David checked in early on the weather radar and saw this big red-and-yellow blob moving toward the area. Seems that the weather had a mind of its own that day.
The first-leg runners had the out-and-back section on the beach (Laura and Mike) and, because of the strong winds, the headwind was really hard to run against. The wind and tide also blew up rows of seaweed to make the path on the beach very narrow. Second-leg runners ran straight into the headwind (Elma and Dana) and started to feel the rain begin. With winds close to 35 miles per hour, those rain drops were not fun to run in.
The third-leg runners (David and Paul) had the run over the causeway for the only hill portion of the race. At this point both teams were very close together. David took the baton from Elma and noticed that Dana was still trying to locate Paul, so Fiesta on Foot was now in front.
At this time, you might say the bottom dropped out. Rain came down in torrents, and lightning was crackling across the sky. David had a concern as he reached the top of the causeway bridge; being 6' 8" tall, he was the tallest object on the horizon for any lightning looking for a tall object. The rain came down so hard that it wasn’t able to provide good runoff; and like little kids looking for rain puddles, the runners had a whole road full of one big puddle.
After this leg, Fiesta on Foot came out with about a ten-minute lead over Sandy Soles. The fourth leg (Liesela and Margaret) had better conditions as the rain let up and the wind died down. Fifth-leg team members (Charlene and Kathleen) and the sixth-leg runners (Elizabeth and Ron) actually had fair conditions to run in.
At the finish line, the weather turned out to be a beautiful day with blue skies, slight wind and lots of tales to tell from team members. As David mentioned, “If someone was just waking up, they would never imagine what conditions we had run through just a couple of hours earlier.”
Knowing all of this, and what everyone went through from stalled traffic, hard rain and wind and seaweed beaches, the comment was that everyone had a good time. That is a runner for you: never let a good run get you down.
Remember the Faith Run 5K at Country Estates on Saturday, May 29th. For details check the San Marcos Runners Club web site.
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