Ville-to-Ville Craft Brew Relay

The Inaugural Ville-to-Ville Craft Brew Relay took place on Saturday, April 14th. The 73-mile course traveled from Asheville, NC to Greenville, NC with stops and sponsorships by many local craft breweries along the way. No, there was no beer-drinking during the relay, but the entire theme still made it a lot of fun.

Our team of 6 was named Happy Hour since all of use have worked together at one time or another. There was myself, Robin, Bernard, and Dale - all current Milliken associates - along with Megan and Tamara, who are former associates. All of us have also run relays together in some combination before... 4 years ago, Tamara, Megan, Bernard, and myself ran the Gulf Coast Interstate Relay. Robin and Dale have run the Smoky Mountain Relay for several years, and Dale also participated the very first year when I ran the Blue Ridge Relay (in 2010?).

All of us are locals except for Tamara who lives in California, so she flew in earlier in the week and stayed with me. We all attended the check-in event on Thursday evening, and then Saturday was the big day for race day!

We rented a minivan for the event instead of a 15-passenger van since it wasn't overnight and we figured we'd have less stuff to carry around. It turned out to be perfect - plenty of room for junk, comfortable for everyone, and much easier to maneuver in the tight transition parking areas!

Race Day

We made the team decision to not stay overnight in Asheville the night before the race. We got assigned a 5:40 AM start time, which meant we departed Greenville at 3:30AM on Saturday morning. It was a VERY early alarm, but we actually had a hilariously giddy/exhausted ride up to the start line at Highland Brewing. 

Team pre-race selfie

Robin at the start line!

My First Leg: Leg #2 - The Hillman

6.0 mi @ 8:11/mi avg, 738ft elevation gain

This leg was ranked as the hardest leg on the relay due to the large hill from mile 1 to mile 2. I'll be honest, I walked up a good portion of that hill because I ended up moving faster that way. It was TOUGH. It was also early in the morning, the race day adrenaline had my heartrate way high (I averaged 181 bpm for this run), and I just needed to walk it off a few times. After I crested the top of the hill at Mile 2, I FLEW through the rest of the run. Just look at my splits. 

That Mile #2, though...

 I pushed through the rest of the leg and ended up passing a total of 9 people ("kills" in relay-speak) during my leg.

Beautiful cloudy sunrise over the mountains

Photo-bombed by some random dudes

We continued on through the rest of the legs in order, everybody doing an amazing job and we were nailing our predicted race time.

Second Leg: Leg #8 - Tali-Ho!
3.5 @ 8:17/mi avg, 325 ft elevation gain

This was the shortest leg of the race, but it climbed over 300 feet in 3.5 miles, making it challenging after the morning's hill climb efforts. I started a bit before noon, which meant my two legs fell at very normal-feeling times of the day. This was nice! I managed to not walk during this leg and felt really strong climbing the hills... not to mention 14 kills.

Finished!

I felt really good about my 2 runs. I wished I could have pushed a little more up the hill in the first leg, but I think it was a good call to take it a little bit easy to have something left for the second run.

The rest of the day was a slow decline into exhaustion but still maintaining the fun and happy atmosphere for the rest of the team.

Beverages at Swamp Rabbit

We gathered at the finish line party and all ran to the finish with Dale, our final runner. We felt really good about our finish time!

Nothing award-winning, but very proud of our efforts and consistency!  Really enjoyed this single-day format for the relay... still challenging and exciting, but much less stressful (on the mind, body, and organizing skills). :)