• Team Name: Runtime Exceptions
• Team Captains: Vivek Kumar, Chakri Gulipalli
  
• The exceptional mates on this journey...

van1: Praveen Jaini, Sapna Kothari, Sachin Thatte, Vivek Kumar, Gurpreet Singh, Coach Raman Rajpal

van2 : Ganesh Iyer, Chethan Channappa, Asif Pathan, Gargi Nalawade, Chakri Gulapalli and yours-truly

the structure
the team was split into 2 vans - 6 runners in each, v1 and v2. runners in v1 run legs1-6, 13-18, 25-30 and v2 runners cover legs, 7-12, 19-24, 31-36 . the map of the 36 legs.

the journey starts...
van1 reached Calistoga at 6:30 am on May 2 to start the race; due to a scheduling issue start was delayed from 7am to 7:30. the starts are staggered based on team estimates for finishing the run to have all teams finish within a 2 hour window at the end.

legs 7-12...
van 2 took the baton [an organsrus green life band] at Napa - starting leg7; at handoff the team was 30 minutes ahead of schedule.

leg 7, our first runner on deck, Ganesh took the baton from Coach Raman, and started off in the drizzle. And soon after his departure van2 runners started our part of the relay. this was the beginning of our adventure - knowing how to read a map is important and our van was hurtling towards exchange 13 instead of exchange 8! after a detour, many thanks to Gargi's iphone and map reading skills + calm and Asif-the-driver being unperturbed through all this, we found our way back to exchange 8 and fortunately just ahead of our runner Ganesh.

leg8: Chethan took the baton from Ganesh and started leg 8. the first 3 miles was a run through the winery and Chethan along with some 15 runners took a wrong turn and went off the relay path. some earlier runner had busted a marked area and as a result they ended up going off for a 2-3 mile detour off the main track. by the time they found their way back to exchange 9, we think Chethan had covered an additional 5 miles! he was quite the trooper still managed to keep a healthy pace of sub 10minutes.

leg 9 was Gargi's and she was anxious perhaps from the extra wait and the (mis)adventures of the previous legs. Fortunately her leg was all along the road and the van could keep up with her. and do its part - i.e. support the runner. we found every shoulder along the way to start the cheering and supporting function, a first for all of us so far on the relay. so at this point i decide to offer peeled tangerines to the passing runners [hey, i loved it when cut strawberries were offered at mile 22 during big sur marathon], no takers other than our runner Gargi. In this day of N1H1 i guess it wasn't surprising that there weren't any takers :). Gargi made good time and galloped into exchange 10.

leg 10, this was my turn and the drizzle started; armed with a the poncho on my back, fuel belt and the baton i was off on leg 10. dubbed as a hard leg, i wasn't exactly sure what to expect. in a 0.5 miles i was to find out the climb of this relay started. the next 3 miles was a continuous climb on paved road. i was roadkilled by several runners on this climb. met a lady who was the captain of her team and was last minute fill in for the leg after running the big sur the week before. she was a trooper about it and it was her birthday , happy birthday i said and kept swinging my arms and making progress [albeit slooooow] up the hill. at one ramp i ventured a peek at the garmin, my pace was showing 20m15s!. at that moment captain vivek line flashed in front of me;

"dude, are you sure 13:30, that's slooow!"

I of course, continued the climb on Grove avenue and was greeted by a friendly resident who had come out to check us out. i will take any cheerleader and i found one in him - his words of solace,

"just another 400meters to go, you have already come up a 1000 feet".

yay, another 100feet to go according to the math Asif had done on the net-elevation in the van. one last surprise after 400meters there is turn on Viewcrest drive and another .3 miles of climbing to the entrance of the ranch. And oh, what a ranch - muddy doesn't begin to accurately describe it.
But before that, as i run up the final incline, i can see the fog on the horizon and that made my day right there. all the slowness etc, forgotten. I did check the time at the summit, i had covered 3.5 miles in 49minutes [14min/mile, not bad for me].
the rain made the ranch mud treacherous to run on - slippery, slushy and required careful stepping around. all runners got their medallions of mud on the backs all over. i was just trying to stay from flying downhill. the grass on the sides of the mud had too many rocks, but venturing there every so often seemed to help a bit.
ran a small segment with Suresh of the ILP team and that's when we encountered a set of grunting cows. at first it seemed like they were just going to cross over from the meadow on the right to the other side, but pretty quickly it was evident they didn't like the sight of us [or perhaps my red shorts, doh!]. went over to the left hand side of the mud path, and just kept running not exactly sure how else to react. must be poor-cow-vision, but once we had a put a little distance the grunting and the hoof sounds stopped; didn't look back, just kept on going....
ran through several [4-5] cattle guards and there was a pleasant volunteer at 2 more turning points along the way - for an open trail run, this was a pleasant sight. focus, keep going...
after the 3rd volunteer i was out of the ranch and onto paved road again - found my footing and kept up a steady downhill pace. this time there was a sheep dog [thankfully behind a fence] who was offended/intimidated/confused by my presence and he kept me company of about 200 meters and then gave up. after taking the left on the Adobe Road almost missed the right turn on casa grande - thanks to an oncoming van's pointer i found my way back. that's just when van2 showed up - shed my poncho to ganesh who came out to take pictures. another mile and handoff to Chakri for leg 11. leg 10 time 99minutes.

leg 11, Chakri went off to a flying start on leg 11. then he had time to find another runner's green band along the way, stops along the way to talk directions/weather/health with another - he's a through and through good samaritan - the runner who had lost her baton was oblivious to the loss until Chethan handed her band back. Chakri had to navigate rolling hills and he just kept going and sights were pretty all along. van1 had reached exchange 12 and their advise was no cell coverage at the exchange point.

leg 12, our last leg for this set - Asif took the baton and kept charging downhill and uphill - by this time it was getting dark. we reached the cheese factory for the handoff to van 1. now it was their turn to go for the next 6 legs.

And we rested - found a sign for "clean, dry sleeping quarters @ the Marin French cheese company.

Will try to complete the rest of the race in a 2nd post.