Relays are fun!

The season has started! Actually it started already a month ago. I had a vague idea of what "the season" meant, but now I know that it is the period that starts at the end of Easter.  Things change when the season starts, and there is a race scheduled almost every week, sometimes several a week. What really marks the start of the season, though, are relay races. These seem to only take place in the season and never during winter. On Friday I participated in the shortest relay race I'd ever heard of: only four in each team and just about 7 minutes for the whole race!

My leg was 200m, which is really perfect right now, as I have a break from running these days. If you are connected to me via Facebook, you might get a different impression as there are about 200 race pictures of me (one for each meter I ran :-), but I have actually not made a single running step (except these 200 meters and some slow warm up) for the last two weeks. I cancelled my participation in individual races, but I am allowed to run a few hundred meters every now and then at relay races. Of course, since I don't get to train, I am getting slower, and I cannot describe how grateful I am to Varegg that they still let me race. It must be the most welcoming and including club in the world, and it feels wonderful to be a part of a club and team, especially when one is injured and on alternative training.

I was very happy and proud to be invited to join the women's relay group of Varegg a couple of months ago. I have the impression that they have intensified recruitment of women recently. Looking at race pictures from only a few years ago, I see just very few ladies among a huge number of club members. Now, however, we are many, and at the last race we had four women's teams.

Running such short distances is very different from what I am used to in races. Fortunately I have quite a bit of experience with short and very fast intervals on treadmill from Barry's Bootcamp, but when you are racing and give it all from the start you get to experience new things. During the first relay race of the season, right after Easter, I ran 300 meters, and I was very happy with my speed during the first 250 meters. The last 50, thought,  gave a very special experience. I had the strength, the breath, and everything needed to continue, but my legs suddenly felt like covered with concrete. I almost started laughing due to the strangeness of the situation, at the same time as I was doing all I could to keep going.

Afterwards, I learned that this is very normal. The clue is to start a little bit slower. But when you only have 300 meters to do it, how slow can you start? The whole things is just about a minute after all... Well, hopefully, as soon as I have recovered, I can continue my plan to become a good runner at all distances (and better at some :-). Varegg is so incredibly nice; they make up the teams for each relay race in such a way that all teams are more or less at the same level in average. I think the plan might be that as we get better we might start making more specialized teams for our age groups. Until now I have been racing in young women's class, as there are always at least one of two young (below 35) friends in each team. I must admit that it feels pretty cool to race in this class, but it is also easy to get discouraged when you race against a bunch of 19-20 year-old girls who make up the other teams.

In fact I have a relay experience even before Varegg. In 2013 I participated in the Bergen City Marathon relay race with nine of my colleagues. We were two women in the team, there was only one team member who was older than me, and we represented in total six different nationalities. It was a great team building experience to train together for this. We had weekly training sessions around the Store Lungegårdsvannet, which is situated right next to our work building. The distance around the lake is exactly 3 km, which is perfect for this training, as the laps are between 1 and 3 km.  We always started with a slow warm up round altogether,  followed by a race lap where we ran as fast as we could and tried to push and catch up with each other. We ended up as number 46 out of 162 teams in the race.

At the relay races of this season that I have been participating in, Varegg has been quite dominant in the number of participants. We register with as many teams as there are people who are willing to race, which makes every race event great fun, almost like a feast. You run your leg, and then you join the others and cheer for the ones who are still racing. And you laugh and laugh and laugh all the time (except when it's your turn to run).

Of course all this fun is possible thanks to our fantastic team leaders Johs and Hege. They take care of everything, and tell us exactly what to do, so that all one needs to do is to just show up and race and have fun.  They are just incredibly kind these guys, and they try to accommodate in the teams as many people as possible who are willing to run. They also organize social events at the club house after the races, so that the fun can continue. In the last race also Frank was invited to join one of the teams, and he enjoyed it so much that he raced with a Varegg t-shirt also at the Fløyen Opp race the following day!

Today I paid my annual membership fee.