I’m back from the Fred Brown Lake Winnipesaukee Relay, where my teammates and I had fun, just in time to leave again on a work trip.

The Lake Winnipesaukee Relay is an 8-person, 60+ mile race around Lake Winnipesaukee in Alton, Wolfeboro, Meredith, and adjacent towns in New Hampshire. I’ve asked my team to contribute recaps of their legs so that I can write a complete review, and I’ll post my review with theirs, but here’s a quick one…

• We had a great time. The race is a super fun one to do as a team because it’s done in one day. It’s also totally possible to see your teammates at several places on the course, so it has a real team feel.
• The weather was crazy – it started out cloudy and 74 with 100% humidity, then heated up to 90 degrees and sunny, then clouded up, cooled off, and finally, the race ended with a terrible thunderstorm. It was a day for weather and weather features prominently in our race stories.
• I ran the slowest 9 miles I’ve ever run in a race. Thanks, in part, to my leg falling in the midst of that 90 degree, sunny stretch. The leg was crazy hilly and there wasn’t so much as a tall weed for shade. I took my shirt off in a race for the first time ever. It was that or die of heat stroke. As one teammate put it, that leg was a survival exercise. It wasn’t my best running, but I lived.
• We swam in the lake and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery.
• All in all, it was fun and I’ll do it again next year.

With my recovery run barely finished, I’m off to North Carolina for work. I hope to fit in some running and get a chance to run with a local running club. I am pretty sure I pack more running clothes than normal clothes every time I travel. Call me optimistic, but I’m hoping I’ll use them all running around Charlotte.