GLORY! The Road Hammer Women’s 2022 Record Setting CTR Win.

With most of my racing, I’m never sure if a race recap will follow.  This was no exception.  After the fact, I often land on wanting the memories preserved for myself.  This experience was so large, so unforgettable that it won’t need much preservation.  The journey to this record was so large, so unforgettable and because it involved my running sisters, I decided that I did want to honour it with words…. Here it is.  Buckle up, though. This is a 17-woman effort. More of a screenplay or novella than a blog post.

After a 2 year absence due to our global pandemic (2020, 2021), the Cabot Trail Relay was back on.  This relay weekend was a homecoming for the running community.  It was a celebration of survival and fitness.  

If you aren’t familiar with the Cabot Trail Relay, it’s a 17-leg, 276km relay race starting and ending in Baddeck, along the Cabot Trail.  This year, there were 63 total teams and more than 1000 runners (up to 17 runners per team).  The event’s birthdate is 1988, when 6  teams of 17 runners tested out the idea.  It’s now one of the largest and most popular running events in eastern Canada.  It’s also one of the most competitive and that’s where we come in.

My team is Halifax Road Hammer Women.  This team were women’s field champions in 2018 and 2019.  Over the 2+ years of the pandemic, our club’s women have grown athletically in power, confidence, teamwork and speed. I have written about a “something special” happening with our women here.  The team that we assembled for 2022 was the fastest and strongest team we had put together to date.  Yes, we wanted to win for a third year in a row.  The Halifax Road Hammer Men’s Team were the 2018 and 2019 open winners and course record holders. The women were ready to chase our own course record.

The course record was held by a team called “The Angels,” hailing from Toronto.  In 2015, they assembled a powerhouse women’s team and came to the Cabot Trail record, in pursuit of a record.  They meant business in 2015.  They broke the long-time dominant “Maine Road Hags” course record by 40 minutes!  The average pace of this record…. 4:12/km over the entirety of 276km.

As our team member Denise Robson said, taking that record down was an audacious goal.

We, the Road Hammer Women: we were here for it. 

The preparation:

The team was set. The goal pace was set. The training…..was all for other goal races, haha!  Our team competed at a variety of A-goal spring races including Boston Marathon, Toronto Marathon, Fredericton Marathon and the USATF Indoor Masters National Championships.  We got through our races, we laid down some big performances, nailed some big PBs, crushed some records. And then May came really fast.  We were a collection of sorta-recovered, sorta-beat-up women. 

In Road Hammer practices, Coach Lee told us over and over again, “you just need to run the pace. Sub 4:12s.” Myself, I was very fit in March for the Indoor Nationals.  It was no longer March though. I had an extended recovery from a fall in NYC.  I had been beat up. This 4:10 became a new number that I memorized.  For my pace squad, 4:12/km in a workout is in line with marathon pace effort.  On the flat roads of our Hammer training territory. The Commons and Marginal Road.  Did this translate to 4:12 on the mountains of  Cabot Trail?  Yep, the math doesn’t really work on that. I even tried to quit my leg and give it to someone else.  Captain Britney told me no: “we need you. Even if you aren’t at peak fitness.”

Coach Lee kept at it: “you can run this pace.  It won’t be 6am (Hammer workout time). There will be a little bit on the line”.  I kept showing up and doing the work. We all did.  In my last easy run with the squad, I was running alongside Rayleen. We were talking about not being in peak shape. She said, “We have years of competition experience, we will use that. We are ok.”  And so, I stepped into this.  I was ready. We all were.

Here’s how it all went down.

Our fearless queen-captain Britney had us tightly organized into team vans and team rooms. Britney and Coach Lee also spent a lot of time assigning runners to relay legs that would play to their runner strengths. 

We arrived at the Gaelic College in Baddeck on Friday evening, fresh, tapered, excited and our team vans packed full of carbs, sneakers and wind/rain gear. The forecast was calling for rain. That’s ok, we had no control over that.  It would be what it would be.

We did our team things, got the morning cheerleading nailed down and Britney reminded us one last time: “We are the strongest, fastest Road Hammer Women’s team that has ever taken the trail. As a collective team, we can break this record.  This confidence comes directly from Coach Lee’s mouth. Let’s get out there and give our all to do this!“

We believe we can do this. Let’s go get that record.

Leg 1: Maura.

Maura, veteran fast runner but Cabot Trail Relay Rookie started us off.  She brought her family to the relay.  Husband Greg was running for the Hammer Men’s Team and their 7 year old twin daughters were in tow.  

Maura went out and simply took care of business.  She ran like the quiet, confident veteran that she is.  She let another woman go at the gun.  She knocked off consistent under-goal paced splits along the spectacular beauty that is leg 1’s mountain and water views.  She confidently overtook the other woman by 5km and effectively proceeded to put nearly 5 minutes on the second girl.  She enjoyed the cheers of “lead woman!” She enjoyed the scenery.  She enjoyed crushing her last km with a sub4:00.  

Most amazing for Maura and for all of us to see unfold was that her daughters got to see her win her leg.  One of the girls was especially taken with the prize winning and proceeded to ask about Mama’s prize nearly every leg for the next 17 legs.  Our precious mini-teammates were later overhead telling a friend, “Mommy and her team ran Cape Breton the FASTEST EVER!”.  

Record Watch: Maura came in at 4:10/km, first female, under goal record breaking pace.

Hammer Men Watch: Aaron Manning wins this leg. Go Hammer Men too!

Leg 2: Colleen 

Our freshly minted NACAC Bronze Medalist Team Canada Half Marathon Champ Star Colleen Wilson was up next and we couldn’t wait to see what she would do.  We didn’t hear much out of Colleen running-wise the night before. She was just all in on the team and record chatter and she obliged all of us pumping her for all the details on her Team Canada run in Costa Rica.

For safety at the relay, no vehicle is allowed to move during a 10 minute lockdown before and after the leg start time.  Our team was lucky to snag a 10 minute tag, allowing just one support vehicle to leave 10 minutes after the next leg begins.  The rest of the team vehicles aren’t allowed to leave for a full 30 minutes (in order to decrease traffic on the road).  So if your runner is fast, everyone but the support vehicle needs to be out on the course to cheer them before the leg begins.  We would love to stay and cheer the full field at the finish line but it’s not possible to cheer both our own next runner and the final runners to cross the line.  So during leg 2, we got out on the course to wait for Colleen.

Oh it was exciting to wait for her. Where would she be??  The Maine-Iac followed by Road Hammer Man Mustafa appeared, followed closely by Colleen in 3rd place.  She’s killing it with a smile as per usual.  The smiling assassin.  An entire field of 59 other people trailing her.  Friends, if I didn’t see you on Leg 2, it’s because Colleen was so dang fast.

We cheer her twice more but that’s all we can do and still park and see her finish this 17km leg.

She crosses the line in 3rd place overall, first women, pace 3:39/km, clocking 1:05:21, breaking the leg 2 course record.

Colleen is very happy.  We pepper her with questions.  A RECORD! You got the record!!  Did you know you could grab it??  She tells us as nonchalantly as usual that she didn’t know what her goal should be coming off National Championships Half Marathon 6 days prior and then she noticed that the same woman set a record on leg 2 and leg 16 in the same year. Colleen would be running both those legs: “So I just made that my goal” she says. Smiling.  Goal and record: assassinated.

• 

• 

• 

As a crew of women, or any crew actually, when we roll into a regular road race weekend, we all race at the same time.  Then we catch up about it after in celebration. One of the most magical things about the relay is that you get to actually watch your running sisters be their best and you get to see their race unfold in front of your eyes.  You see the full anatomy of the race.  When they tactically hold back. Where they really gun it and let it rip.  If you are lucky, your few choices on the course and your strategically played song are even turned into fuel.  On Colleen’s leg, I may have told 4th place runner Dan M: “It’s ok Dan, eating Colleen Wilson’s dust is an honorable place to be.”   It was amazing to witness the beginning, middle and end of Colleen’s record breaking leg. At the relay, if you are running a later leg, the excitement and anticipation builds all day long.  You watch your women crush their legs and dig deep for the team and you can’t wait until it’s your turn to do the same for the team. 

Record watch: 2 relay legs run below goal pace for us.

Hammer Men Watch:  Mustafa finished in 2nd place, whoop!

Leg 3: Denise

Next up is one of our GOATs, Denise. Denise will be doing the double as we are down 2 women.  This leg 3 is the warm up leg. Her next leg is Mackenzie Mountain. Both legs are needed in her goal to run all of the legs of the relay.

We are all together at one point cheering Colleen and we talk about the level of “crushing” that is about to happen.  Where she has 2 legs, Denise needs to crush this one just the right Goldilocks amount so she can turnaround and do Mackenzie.  Denise heads off to warm up.  

My van gets out on the course before leg 3 starts as Kaili/Brit’s van has the 10 minute ticket.  Now we wait for our GOAT.  She comes to us, right where we expect, lead women, 5th overall behind the usual suspects of MaineIacs, Hammer Men and Black Lungs.  She is ahead of the AUS man.  I tell her she is in the lead, there’s no other woman to be seen.  She looks like her fierce, happy racing self. 

It may be true that no one is better at bleeding for it in a race than Denise is.  But we don’t need her to bleed for it here.  Gotta save that for her later mountain.  We drive a few km ahead and next time I see her, I tell her: “Denise, that’s fast enough!” Because it is fast enough.

When she finishes in 5th place, 3:58/km pace, women’s winner, she says, “that was an easy one!”

Record watch:  3 relay legs run below goal pace. No number crunching yet.  Just knowledge that we are under.

Hamme Men watch: Gavin, also clocked a double, WINS!

• 

• 

Leg 4: Rayleen

Rayleen Hill, Denise’s GOAT contemporary, is next. This leg is a big deal one, it’s Smokey Mountain.  9km to the foot of the mountain. A 2.1km climb to the peak.  Then many km left for 20km total.  Rayleen is the previous Leg 4 record holder from her CRT running 20 years ago.  NBG.  Wrong! Big deal!  

Small sidebar: as Rayleen warms up, I buy my long anticipated Lobster Sandwich at Wreck Cove General store.  There is much judging of the eating of said lobster sandwich from all but Jennie.  Janie even says, “What!? Are you washing that down with a Starbucks Frappuccino!?”  I maintain that it’s fine, I know what I am doing.  I am not running for another 6 hours.  Jennie puts it all to bed: it’s carbs, protein and caffeine, it’s all good.  Also what’s all good: Rayleen Hill!

Rayleen told us all day Friday and Saturday that she knew how to run this leg.  She was ready to lay it down.  Well, after I translated the pace in min/km to min/mile, she was ready to lay it down. FYI 4:11/km = 6:44/mile.  THEN  Rayleen went out there. She laid it down.

She ran exactly like she said she would.  She kept it “chill” during the opening 9km.  By “chill”, she means 6:33 miles.  She let the lead men hammer ahead and she also let 2 women go.  

Up at the top of the mountain, the vans actually had trouble determining where the top of the mountain was.  There was heavy and dense fog and very limited visibility.  I parked the van and then realized we were at a lookoff and not the top so we had to relocate. 

We all gathered at the top.  Brit and Kaili had the boom speaker ready. Denise was sitting in a lawn chair, getting that Mackenzie recover kick started.  We waited for runners to emerge from the fog.  Where would we see our Ray?!  The rise of runners up Smokey is one of the most iconic periods of the relay.  Teams line the guard rails and bang rocks on the rails, creating a drumming rhythmic symphony that the runners crest the mountain to.  So we are at the top of the mountain and we know the lead runner is coming when the spectators below start to bang their rocks in unison.  Really, it’s breathtaking. 

The MaineIac emerges from the fog first, followed by the Black Lung and then our Hammer Matthias, looking awesome.  The lead woman is super strong and arrives to us in 6th place, already out of reach.  Rayleen in her pink hat, arose out of the mist in 10th place and we all lost our minds.  So fun! On the ascent of Smokey Mountain, she had reeled in and passed a woman to pull into second place.  

She says that she ran nearly 10 minute  miles up the mountain. Because it’s a freaking mountain.  And then the down starts.  We are supporting her and stopping every 2km where it’s safe.  We see the 3rd place woman closing in on Rayleen.  It’s ok.  The goal is to run our record pace and Rayleen, an experienced queen, knows how many matches there are left to burn to arrive at the finish as close to record pace as possible. That’s the job.  She nails it, hammer style.  She finishes in 10th place, 4:13/km pace.  3rd woman. Remarkably tight on record pace given the 2.1km mountain. 

Record watch:  3 legs under pace, 2 of them way under, 1 just 1 second over. We are cruising!

Hammer Men Watch:  Matthias places 3rd as well. 

• 

• 

• 

Leg 5:  Janie

We have 2 hard legs coming up.  There is no named mountain in them but they are unrelenting in their rolling.  This is ok though, we have women who are unrelenting too. 

Janie is up next.  She’s a native Cape Bretoner which means tough as nails and of all of us, she likely has the most relay experience.  Going into relay, Janie admits to mixed emotions.  She is excited to be back home on the Cabot Trail after many years away, she is happy to be running with this incredible team of fast women, but is also experiencing serious nerves and imposter syndrome feelings. The team had an incredible, fast start to the day, and she feels like the pressure is mounting. The constant reassurance that she is getting from her teammates that they need her here, running this leg for them, is exactly the antidote she needs. 

And so, she feels gratitude standing at the leg 5 start line in a Road Hammers singlet, ready to do her best to help smash the record. The race started well. She went out a bit too fast but quickly eased into a manageable pace that she felt she could hold at least until the hills started.

She had done this leg 16 years ago.  But  like the mother brain does after childbirth, the racing brain effectively erases all of the memories related to the agony of this leg and leaves only the fuzzy warm memories of being cheered against the backdrop of Ingonish’s beauty.  Now it all comes flooding back. She loved the start, it’s calm and gentle. Then the climbing starts. It’s not a mountain, but the incline is relentless. She knew it was coming, she’s ok, starting to dig deeper and focusing on the cheers starting to come from open windows driving by.

At some point in the first climb, Masters Queen and Road Hammer-On-Another-Team Paula Keating comes up behind her. Janie can’t recall exactly what she says, but it is lovely and encouraging and buoys her rather than brings her down. Thank you, Paula. Watching Paula’s easy, beautiful strides helps immensely and Janie focussed on chasing her for the next while. Like running behind Colleen, running behind the Master’s Queen is an honourable place to be.

Janie is now digging deep but still in control. She looks quickly at the water at one point, and says a brief hello and thank you to her beautiful island. The cheering and watering from road hammers teammates is incredible and so helpful. Another runner tells her that she is lucky to have such a supportive, cheering team.

At 12 km it hurts. A car pulls over playing the song ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John. Janie and her siblings call their dad the Rocket Man. She’s sad that he’s not there with her but she feels his support behind her now as she tackles the last part of the leg. 

At the finish, Janie is  relieved that it’s over hopeful that the leg didn’t hurt our lead on the course record too much. Janie gave it everything, but she is worried that she didn’t give the team what they needed for pace. The team, however, is not worried about this. Janie did exactly what we needed her to do.  She relentlessly covered this unrelenting leg. 

Janie crosses the line as 3rd woman, final pace on the hills 4:22/km.  

Record watch: 5 runners in and we are under overall record pace.  We knew we would have some over, some under.  All of our women have given it their all. 

Hammer Men watch: Greg finishes in 4th

Leg 6: Britney

It’s our captain’s turn!  Bring on Britney, ready for Leg 6.  There’s much debate and relay lore about the hardest relay leg.  Most agree that the 3 mountains are hardest: Smokey, North, Mackenzie.  Followed by either leg 6 or leg 17.  Leg 6 is known as Little Smokey.  Brit is both ready for it and more nervous than she has ever been for any race. This one is not just about her: her time, her splits, her performance. It’s about doing her absolute best for her team. The record ups the ante.

 
While Britney and Coach Lee were strategically placing each woman on the leg that would best suit their strengths, Britney, coming off of Boston and with her strong hill running, is placed here.  Now it is 3pm and people have been “helpfully” wincing every time Britney says she is running Leg 6.  Ohhh: hard one, sneaky bastard of a leg…. Nerves mount.

Britney warmed up with Kaili, and Kaili is the best hype girl there is. She told Britney that she is going to be amazing.  She tells her that she is strong and that she is going to make everyone proud. This helps so much.  It’s Hammer Time.

Britney has pledged a promise to herself that she will not go out too hard. There is a notoriously challenging finish awaiting.  The gun goes and she watches two women run out ahead. Brit sticks to the plan and the promise morphs into: “I will do my very best to see them again.”

The leg is challenging. The people weren’t wrong. It’s not a mountain, but the climbs were long,  steep, and there were lots of them. For Britney, the entire run is punctuated with the support of her team.

The team had collected individual pump up songs. Brit finds her women strategically placed at the top of each hill with music blaring so that she could hear them from afar.  It motivates her to the top of each climb.  Now she can just think, “get to my girls, get to my girls” and then she is rewarded with the absolute best “woooo” cheers of support. The Hammer men are providing the same support, with slightly less wild “woo”-ing.

My van, now comprised of Rayleen, Jennie and I, left leg 6 before the start gun so we could cheer Britney at 5km and 7km and also get me to the start of my leg.  It is 2 hours to my race and I am wearing rainproof cheer gear, not a stitch of running gear and needed to transform into my racing self. We pulled over at Black Rock Beach for a little seaside locker room.   

We also set up a little seaside #fastbraids salon here too.

The seaside cheering is amazing.  The Maine Road Hags had a long period of domination at the Cabot Trail Relay and it was their record that the Angles broke in 2015.  On this leg, we see who is likely the most talented of the 2022 Road Hags crushing it in first female place. Here is Britney, fast braids flying behind her, determinedly eating up the pavement. Love it. 

Opps, turns out we are also now setting up a seaside comedy show.  Our rental van is massive.  Rayleen, a standard transmission driver, is driving.  The transition to an automatic giant beast has been bumpy.  It’s time to leave the Black Rock Beach Look off to chase Britney.  Ray can’t get the car to drive. Because it’s not on.  It’s rolling backwards. Toward the beach.  We are getting punchy, having been on the road since 7am and it’s now 4pm. We roll backwards towards a possible perilous outcome and it’s hilarious.  Ray! The van isn’t on!!  Ok, ok, she turns it on.  But now she’s got it in some weird S gear and Jennie and I see that the men’s team next to us are also killing themselves laughing at us.  We finally get out to turn that energy to cheering Brit.  Besides, is it even the Cabot Trail Relay until someone nearly drops their vehicle off a cliff?

So Britney could see the first and second place women in the leg ahead of her for the entire run and is focusing on slowly reeling them in.  Denise appears, yelling: “they’re both dying, Britney – go get them!!!”. It’s the push she needs and she runs the next few kms chanting “Be. Like. Denise. Be. Like. Denise.”

Britney, with Denise’s-spirit closes out the notoriously hard finish climb and is met with team hugs and love which also includes Leg 6 Hammer Man Ian H.  She feels relief.  She got it done.  She contributed everything she could on the day in our team’s collective effort toward a record.

Britney crossed the line second female to the Road Hag, 4:14/km overall pace on this tough Little Smokey leg. 

Record watch: 6 runners in and we are still overall under record pace

Hammer men watch:  Ian H finishes 3rd.

• 

• 

• 

Leg 7: Erin (me!) 

Now it’s my turn. I wanted to win the female field. I wanted to run under goal record pace. I did both of those things.

I had a great warm up and jogged back to the start with Luc, the runner for Slow Ships.  He shares his determination to set a new course record and thinks that it could be the day for it.  I am excited for him. I tell him that I am determined to run under the overall relay record pace. We will see how we each do afterwards.  A long time friend’s son, Samuel, is running my leg as well.  We have run many races together over the years and he has long since overtaken me while at peak fitness. I was curious to see how he would do as well.  

I have a final huddle with my girls and then lined up.  

Off the line, I fell in behind Samuel and a Black Lung runner with the name van Koeverden on the back.  That’s an interesting name. The only time van Koeverden I have ever known of was the Canadian Olympian.

Leg 7 is 5km up hill.  This I knew.  I have run it before.  The key is to just grind it out for 5km, knowing it will end.  Samuel is leading our pack of 3.  But even at 500m, it’s too slow for me.  There is a record on the line.  Van Koeverden gets out front. I follow.  We run on.  My 1km split is 4:12, precisely the goal record pace despite the climbing. This is decent. There are still 4kms to run UP. This dude van Koeverden starts to gap me a bit. 

The first 10 minutes of the leg are quiet.  Relay vehicles aren’t allowed on the road yet and no one can stop until 5km.  Sometimes I create a fun game: how far out can I get before my team catches up to me.  

I see Maura at 5km.  I ask her about any women trailing me.  She says, “no one at all.” Happiness.

Then the Black Lungs team van appears.  They are cheering for me: “Lead Girl! That’s an Olympian right in front of you! Go chase him down!”  OMG, it IS Adam van Keoverden, the Olympic Gold medalist.  I tell the Black Lungs I will try to chase him down!  Then I can see them up ahead, chirping at him.  Lol. This team continued to cheer for me for the whole of the leg, it was tremendously motivating!  They were as helpful as my own team, haha!!  

That’s saying a lot because my dream team was tremendous.  They had my songs at the right moment. They were screaming their amazing heads off at me.  I was crushing it and I loved crushing it with them out there.  I grinded up that hill and stuck with the grind.  I knew it would get better over the crest and knew I had to run the hill as strong as I could for my team.  Over the 5km climb, I clocked splits of 4:12, 4:14, 4:13, 4:15 and 4:20.  A massive elevation gain of 146m over 5km.  Then it was…. Hammer Time, Baby (you always say that in Michael Bergeron’s voice!). 

The weather had been a little bit of everything. Rain to begin.  Then calm.  Then a slice of sunshine.  Then deep fog set in.   When I started running down, I couldn’t see much of the road ahead of me on account of deep fog.  It was helpful.  I started to run each kilometer on the verge of recklessness, with no regard to what came next because I couldn’t see what was next.  All that mattered was as fast as possible over this one kilometer.  The leg was only 13km plus change. I knew I would not implode in a detrimental way though I may pay a debt over the last 2 km for being so aggressive here.  

I felt exactly like I wanted to: tall, strong and powerful.  Fast turnover on the downs.  My fastest 2 kms were a 3:33 and a 3:41.   I had a clear thought of: I am so lucky to be out here, doing what I love, the way I want to, with this team of fierce women.  I had the Black Lungs continuously yelling at me, encouraging me.  My team, both the Hammer men and the women were superb cheerleaders.  It was pretty special to tackle the relay with both a men’s and women’s team: it meant we had 17 + 17 cheerleaders at all times, plus other Hammer teammates spread out over other “legacy” teams.

I tried my hardest to chase down the Olympian. Turns out he is very fit and fast lol.  He finally and decisively ghosted me on the last climb with 2km to go to finish 85 seconds ahead of me in 4th place. I finished in 5th place, lead female.  Final pace per Garmin/Strava 4:02/km for my team, under course record pace.  Final pace per Atlantic Chip 4:07/km because the relay moved the finish line of leg 7 years ago without ever adjusting the relay book. All good. It’s cumulative time that mattered and we got that pace time back on the next leg with young star Holly. 

I was so thrilled to be able to nail it (Hammer-Time-Baby) when it mattered for my team. I hadn’t had a single workout since recovering from my March injury where I felt fast or ran well.  I told myself that all I needed was a 3 week build and a 1 week down week for my fitness to return and I got those.  Then I had to tell myself: “girl, your fitness IS back.”  The last thing that Coach Lee said to me was, “just go and compete.”  When my crew asked me at the start line how I was, I said, “I feel exactly like I want to. My track speed is back.”  Those were statements to myself so that I would run that way.  Lee was right back at those practices leading up to the event, with the record on the line, I would be fine. 

Record Watch: we didn’t have time to examine the records here, we had to swap myself and Colleen and send a crew to Cheticamp to sleep before the early morning legs.  I am now in the team van with Britney, Kaili and Holly.  We will be the night owls.  We estimate we are about on par. 

Hammer Men Watch: Ian Doyle came 3rd.  Luc Gallant, my warm up pal, missed the record by 5 seconds.

• 

• 

• 

Leg 8: Holly

We are now on the hunt for Holly.  We were a little more than 10 minutes leaving the start line due to the van shuffle.  It’s a short leg, 12.36km.  Holly is running so fast that she’s making it hard for us to find her.  We get through nearly the whole field before we see her magnificent tall stride, hammering the road.

She looks AMAZING!  And happy.  We get out the tunes out for her. She’s killing it!  

We hop back into the van, we don’t even know if she’s leading the women yet because we stopped as soon as we got her. We are hunting down the next runner to take stalk of how this race is unfolding and OMG the next runner is our Hammer Man Ian Mac!! Holly is trailing Ian Mac!!  We cheer like a winning touchdown has been scored and it appears that the cheering is for Ian and it mostly is but it’s also for our girl Holly who has put it to the field and it now directly behind Ian!!

We drive ahead for one more cheer stop.

The Doritos Emergency:

There’s been a running joke all day that you run and then you eat the chips.  For everyone but me, you also do the run and then eat the lobster (at the banquet). I already ate the lobster.  But I will wait for the chips.  I am happy in the van, basking in the post-race glow of a race gone as best as possible. Suddenly I remembered! “Now I eat the chips!”

Kaili and Britney are ready for chips too.  They are in the front. “Doritos! Get the Doritos! We need the Doritos!” 

I like Doristos.  From my seatbelted spot, I rummage in the trunk.  I find All Dressed Chips. I pass them up. 

“Not those! The Doritos!” 

Ok, I will get the Doritos when we park.  We park for Holly.  I look for the Doritos. I can’t find them.

“We need Doritos!” comes from the front seat.  They are adamant that they are there.  

I can’t find them. I am laughing. 

What about the All-Dressed Chips?  These are deemed to be unacceptable.  It has to be Doritors.  It’s now unacceptable that I can’t find them. It’s a full fledged Doritos emergency.  

Get these girls their chips!

The chips are put on hold so we can properly cheer Holly! GO GIRL!!!

Back to Leg 8:

Holly crosses the line in 4th place, 1st woman, 4:10/km pace, under record pace. We don’t have any quality photos of Holly and it’s obviously the Doritos’ fault.

Men’s Team Watch: Ian MacIntrye finishes 2nd, go Ian!

We need to scoop up Holly and make tracks fast.  There’s a wash-out and single lane section on North Mountain and if you aren’t on the road and through this section before the runners, you need to wait for the very last runner to cross this single-laned section. As soon as we park, the girls head to grab Holly and see our leg 9 Hilary.  I linger at the car and unpile some bags in the trunk. 

I triumphantly locate…. The Doritos.

Leg 9:

We have our Hilary, our Billy-Goat on Leg 9.  She’s meant for this.  Though she says she isn’t training hard, she has the grit and never quit required to: climb this big ass mountain, run down the other side and close out a final 6km of rolling hills.  Her grit is honed by her NCAA Div 1 running background.  Trained or not, she will do this and no doubt find another gear to do it more.

We have a super quick chat with her. She’s ready to roll.  And we get out onto the course to see her.  We have a very quick and triumphant team chat with Leg 8 Winner Holly who is glowing! YAY!  Then Holly asks Hilary, “Where is my pasta?”  Lol. Hilary doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Holly asks me where her pasta is.  I also do not know about location of said pasta.

Holly wants her pasta.  We have solved the Doritos Emergency only to have a Pasta Emergency develop.  

Holly insists that the pasta is in my van. But I am in her van now.  Did I move the pasta?  I still haven’t seen any pasta.  Only lobster. And now Doritos.  I tell her she will have to eat Doritos instead. 

We get in the car to drive. We have put away the pasta issue and we can now unpeel the fabulous layers of Holly’s race! She was amazing! She was fast! She went for it.  And she got it: pace, win, and 4th place overall finish.  It’s emotional.  Holly has had a spring full of challenges and was rewarded beautifully for her perseverance here and it’s so special that we got to witness it together.  What we witnessed was redemption.

Record Watch:

Now we are driving over North Mountain and we come upon both a spectacular wash out of the road at the base of the mountain and also a pretty spectacular sunset.  There’s thick fog that is dropping and suddenly, we are above the fog. Beyond the single lane section, we find a look off to park at.  It’s about 10km, after most of the descent.  We have a while to wait.  It’s time to crunch the numbers.

It’s also now 8:30pm and we’ve been on the road for more than 12 hours. The crunching of the numbers is definitely slower than our racing- we are tired.  How to even approach this?  Add up our average pace?  It doesn’t work that way, the legs are all different length.  Instead, we track the over/under of each of our own legs against what the record setting Angels ran in 2015. Britney and Kaili have multiple phones out, calculators on the go, trying to make sense of it. Fatigue. It’s hard. Math is hard.  So many numbers. What do they mean?  Holly and I are hardly helping, we are still in the backseat gushing over how awesome Holly’s race was.  Really, it’s the rebirth of Holly, the champion. Holly lands on: “this what the best race I have ever run” and that feels more important in this moment than the numbers.

But at last, Britney, our professor, has interpreted what it means.  We were under our goal paces for the first 3 legs.  Nearly even/slightly over x 3 legs.  I ran my leg 7 a full 10 minutes faster than the Angel did in 2015. At the conclusion of leg 8, we have an 8 minute cushion for a record breaking final relay time.  Boom!

Back to Leg 10:

And boom, the runners are approaching!  The Maine-Iac first. Then: IT’S MICHAEL!  Who has been yelling, “What time is it? Hammer time baby!” for 12+ hours.  It’s his turn. He’s hammering all right.  We see our Hammer guys on other teams, Ryan and Marc.  Then it’s our Hilary! Just giving it her all.  Looking so strong and fierce. What a girl. She’s battling it out with the Ontario Glory Dame Woman.  So exciting!

This leg is so hard.  Now she’s gotta battle over 6 more km of rolling.  She battles fiercely to a second place female finish, a hard fought 4 seconds behind the Glory Dame.  Overall pace 4:29/km.  Exactly what the team needs on this mountain leg.  The next woman is a full 4 minutes behind Hilary.  

Hammer Guy Watch: Michael holds onto 2nd place!

Leg 10:

Now it’s time for Denise #2, taking on Mackenzie Mountain, all up the mountain, 10 switchbacks over 6.2km to climb. The leg is 14.7km total.  It’s now completely dark out.  It’s nighttime. We have a hard time even finding Denise at the dark starting line.  

She finally appears, says 2 funny things to us and she’s off.

Lee gives us a job to tell Ian to drive right to leg 11 to deliver the men’s runner.  We float about, socializing.  Looking for Ian.  We have 10 minutes to find him.  This spot is notorious for runners getting left behind.  We can’t find Ian.  We are also looking for food.  We can’t find food we want for supper. Holly’s pasta, still can’t find that either.  We put away the food search.  Maybe we will eat pizza in Cheticamp.  We put away the Ian search too.  He’s a numbers guy and we gotta trust that he will deliver.  Now we gotta go find Denise!

We nearly reach the front of the field before we reach Denise.  She’s out there just smokin’ it.  The weather is also trying to smoke her.  When we step out of the car on a look out, about 3 switchbacks up, the wind nearly blows us away.  Where did that come from??  It came from the Cheticamp side of the island, the windiest place in the province.  It’s fierce.  But so is Denise.  She is raging up this mountain.  We tell her that there are no women in sight, she looks awesome.  Keep at it.

We drive to the front of the field now.  The Maine-Iac is leading.  Our Hammer Man Thomas is looking terrific right behind him in second.  Now we can count back to Denise, she’s in 7th place.  She asks us again about the next woman.  I tell her: “there is no next woman, she’s way back.”  Our van missed a pair of women who took Denise out hard.  The first 3.1km of this leg are a warm up to the base of the mountain and seems these women wanted out in front of the legend that is Denise.  She had none of it but they did make her drop two sub6 miles to shake them.  She has thoroughly shaken them by the time we see her.

We drive a little more ahead. Denise is battling hard.  It’s windy.  It’s now driving rain too.  All the things.  But can’t nobody hold her down or break her stride.  She always keeps on moving. 

The next time we see her, she’s yelling something urgently at me.  I tell her, “you are way in the lead,” but she was so urgent and the girls were yelling so loudly, I’m not sure if I heard her correctly.  It’s pitch black up here and with rain falling, there’s zero light from the sky.  I ask the girls to pull ahead just a bit and let me run next to her to make sure it’s all good. 

“Are you ok?”  

“YES!”  As in: of course!! “I need to know about the women.”  

I laugh and yell, “DENISE! There are NO WOMEN!  They are all gone ! It’s just you!”  There is essentially a trail of carnage behind her.  If there is bleeding, it’s behind her.

Denise finishes, just her, in 7th place, 4:32/km up this crazy mountain leg.  Pure power. 

Record Watch:  We don’t review here, we knew that the mountain legs would be slower than the overall goal pace because they are mountains. 

Hammer Guy Watch: Thomas takes a commanding second by 4 minutes, an agonizing 13 seconds behind the Maine-Iac.

Leg 11:

Danielle, our latest addition to the team, is up next.  She arrives on course with Hilary.  Hilary’s job was to run up North. Danielle’s job is to run down French Mountain.  We find her at the start and she is so super amped up; like a tiny, supercharged up powerhouse.  We are so excited to see her bring it!

As it turned out, Mother Nature was ready to bring it too. The intense wind at the top of Mackenzie seems to have intensified, with the main intent of blowing the runners back up the mountain.  This leg is so intense.  The weather is simply awful.  Wind. Driving rain. 

It’s easy to spot Danielle with her quick turnover, strong stride and pink light up vest.  We cheer our hearts out for her and she in turns runs her heart out for the team.  Danielle’s spring race season required some unplanned resiliency as illness prevented her from competing her goal race. She turned around and nailed her goal at a different race, so resiliently, 1 week later, breaking the 90 minute barrier in the half.  She’s got a major barrier here in weather but she carries on, so resiliently. 

Danielle finishes 2nd female, overall pace 4:39/km.  In any race, all you can do is fight with what you’ve got and Danielle fought hard.

Hammer men watch:  Rowan wins this leg. 

Leg 12:

Now it’s Katherine’s turn.  Katherine arrived by herself during the day.  Leg 12 would begin at 12:35am. That’s wild, right?  When talking to Britney, Katherine said no problem, I’ll just drive up when I can and set up my tent and sleep there after.  No problem.  That’s just the right amount of wild to excel at a 12:35am run when you are just showing up and haven’t ever witnessed any of the relay before.

Katherine is one of the newest of the Road Hammer crew, having moved to NS from Vancouver for work.  We all took notice of her superb racing skills when she appeared and dusted our fast girls Meaghan, Kaili and Britney in the fall Blue Nose 2021 5km. With her tent and her 5km speed, she was the right girl for the midnight leg.

It just wasn’t the right weather.  The wind continued to howl.  It was still raining.  She fought hard.  She just didn’t get to fully cash into her 5km speed because of the conditions.

Katherine finished 2nd female, 8th overall, pace 4:18/km 

Hammer Men Watch: Justin L punches 3rd

• 

• 

“Bedtime”

During leg 12, it’s time for my van to head to the hotel rooms to grab some sleep.  There’s a lot of debate in the car about how much sleep time is available.  It’s 12:45am now. We need to be back on the road at 5am.  We need to drive 20-25 minutes to Cheticamp.  We have a collection of motel rooms and a motel house for both Hammer teams.  Once perfectly organized pre-relay-start, they are now as organized as you can image when runners have been arriving in steady trickles for hours and that is….not at all organized.  We don’t even know if there are beds available. Or showers.  So much debate about whether we should shower or just sleep. But wait a minute, there’s another nutritional emergency called the “OMG We Never Ate Supper Emergency”.  We decide we can’t sacrifice any seconds of sleep standing in Waboo’s Pizza line.  We must (1) shower and (2) sleep.  The Doritos, Mike and Ikes and green grapes that we ate are now called supper. Things really went south nutritionally when we lost Jennie, dietitian extraordinaire, to her pre-leg-14 sleep.

We get to the motel house.  There are beds.  There are 2 bathrooms.  Jennie is up and looking race ready with some beauty fast braids. All is as good as it can be when it’s now 1:20am and we have 3 hours to shower/sleep.

I go upstairs.  There is no shower. Just an old-timey bathtub.  It gives me the giggles.  I must go down and tell someone. I tell Britney.  She says we can all shower down here. I say, “nope! I am going for it!”  

I am now sitting in a pastel pink bathtub, having a bubble bath at 1:30am. It’s more than a little weird.  It’s also weird to be going to bed at 1:30am with a 4:15am alarm so I just go with it and it feels quite good in fact. 

Leg 13: Deanna

Deanna thought she was crazy lining up at 2 am in the pouring rain and headwind, with 16km of the dark rolling road ahead. Perhaps she truly was.  But realizing that there were 62 other runners beside her and 14 teammates working towards the same goal, her daunting thoughts quickly turned into pure excitement and awe for this sport and these athletes. 

Once the leg started, the small town of Cheticamp disappeared and they began to run in what felt like another world. The runners spread out quickly, but the cheering from the passing vans kept their legs moving. A couple of Cold Brew Gu’s also helped, as we were 19hrs into the relay with not much time for rest.

My van misses Deanna’s 2:10am 15.88km leg.  The wind doesn’t miss it though.  It’s still howling.  Deanna howls back. She runs as hard as she can, everything she’s got for her team.  Deanna is our newest marathoner and an adventurous soul with trail running ultras coming up.  She prepared for this leg by running at night.  She was prepared.  She fought hard with what she had. Deanna says that some races are like butter, however, this one is best described as sandpaper, but when else would you get the experience of running the Cabot Trail in the middle of the night?

Deanna has an impressive 6th overall finish, second female, 4:29/km pace.

Hammer Men Watch:  It’s Jamie for 2nd.

4:15am wake up. 

Back at the house in Cheticamp we start waking up from our quick power naps around 4:15am.  I bet that we all reach for our phones right away and scroll through Atlantic Chip.  We see that the night legs were super duper tough.  

Colleen, Kaili, Holly, Britney and I gather at the kitchen table. It’s quiet.  We’re not sure if some of the guys are still in bed or not.  We are whispering.  Someone whispers, “the record might be slipping away.”  If this is the case, it’s ok.  We came here to fight.  We are fighting the road, the past performances of some stellar Toronto women and we are fighting Mother Nature: wind and rain too. We know our women fought as hard as they could overnight.  We are proud of them. Nothing will take that away. 

We get on the road at 4:45am.  Jennie started her leg at 3:45am.  Holly and I are eating animal crackers for breakfast.  They are surprisingly tasty.  I look over at Colleen next to me.  So does Holly.  Holly asks, “Are you drinking coffee? Did you make instant coffee?”  Colleen replies, “I brought my aeropress. I have goals.”  That’s all. LOL. 

Jennie has goals too. 

Leg 14: Jennie

Leg 14 is the 2nd longest leg at 19.81km and the sun rises during this leg.  It’s as flat as any leg on the trail.  This leg is for our mileage monster, Jennie.  The long leg is where she belongs and she was 100% ready to attack it.  She’s hungry for a big performance and a big win. The clock denied her in her last race, adding fuel to really lay it down in this one.

Jennie regularly runs early and initially thought that running at 3 am would be like running every morning at 5am.  Turns out: it was not. 3 am is strange.  She finds it dream-like.  By one km in, she’s alone. This is ok, she trains in rural PEI alone, also in the dark.  She’s got this. Though she is wondering who started the lie that leg 14 is flat.  It’s only flat in “compared to mountains” logic.  

Jennie’s dream-like run world is silent save for the chirping birds. It’s a treat to listen as the world starts waking up again.  At 8 km, Jennie hears teammate Ian, Hammer Man,yelling about catching the guy in front of her.  Jennie has been working at closing the gap for the last 5 km and can finally see him 400m ahead. The dark allows a sneak attack.  She progressively inches closer to the shadow of the dark stranger. Jennie is queasy.  2 am breakfast is sloshing. Run Jennie. Run fast. But don’t leave 2 am breakfast on the side of the road.

Instead of barfing, Jennie thinks about all of the speedy performances that have inspired her all day, and all the inspiring performances to come.  Her women are the extra push she needs.  

At 15km the darkness fades and the dark stranger ahead is finally within reach.  New goal:  catch him.  Hammer crew is shouting about passing said stranger but she can’t catch the name they are calling him.  WIth so much grit, Jennie pulls up behind him with less than 1 km to go.  He lets her go without much of a fight. He looks familiar. With 400m to go, stranger pulls up beside Jennie, smiles and finishes with a gear that Jennie doesn’t have.  She holds her pace into the finish. Where she finds out that the stranger is Angus Rawling, sub-30 minute 10km speedster.  Nearly taken down by a Hammer. Jennie determines that leaving her 2 am breakfast on the side of the road would have been a fair exchange for Angus Rawling.

Jennie  stops her watch at the finish 1:22:34, winning female, only 4 incredibly short seconds behind Rawling. She knows without looking that it is on record-breaking pace, and good enough to carry the team through to the next leg. 

While Jennie is running, the van stops for coffee at the Dancing Goat.  We have driven into the sunrise.  The coffee is life-giving.  We missed our supper in our final nutritional emergency and the cinnamon rolls and pastries are life-giving too.

And then! Jennie’s time pops up!  She CRUSHED IT, breathing fresh life back into our record chase.  With coffee, the numbers are starting to make sense.

OMG, OMG, OMG…. the numbers aren’t so bad afterall!!! 

Jennie finishes 11th overall, 1st female, average pace…. Wait for it….. 4:11/km!!!!

Record Watch:  with Jennie’s under-goal-pace performance, we are closing a gap on the cumulative record time.  We have 3 fierce women left: Morgan, Colleen and Meaghan.  An hour before, it didn’t look good.  A flame of hope, fanned by beating Angus Rawling, is lighting again.

Leg 15: Morgan

Morgan ignites the fire. 

Fresh off a monster 10km performance of 38:57 on the monstrously tough Blue Nose course, that’s a 3:54/km pace, our rising star is ready to rise higher. It’s a flurry of rapid fire chatter in the car.  If Morgan can run 3:54/km on the Blue Nose course, what can she run here, on this rather flat 15.42km leg, at 5:40am.  What does the team need? We can’t calculate anything other than: we need fast.  

We rip out on the course and find an ideal spot beyond 5km.  We will wait for her here.  We are in front of a church.  Her pump up song is Usher’s Yea!  Hmmm… seems like we can play that in front of a church at now 6am.  But should we play it in front of the house across the street?  Are locals pleased or displeased to be awoken at 6am by Usher? The Hammer guys roll up next to use.  Rayleen, Deanna and Jennie appear.  OMG we celebrate Jennie!! There are 12 Hammers, lining the church-side road, waiting with anticipation.   The Maine-Iacs van pulls up and they start blaring their tunes for their lead runner.  If they did it, so can we.  Usher yells YEA!  Johnny arrives to us, in second place for the Hammer Men.  Kicking butt. Alistair comes. Hammer guy on another team.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting…. Usher Yea, Yea, Yea…. 

Morgan appears! She is running fast, like the house is on fire.  She is so happy, so strong.  She waves, nods at us. That’s the “acknowledgment of my women nod”.  A few strides.  Then she looks at us and nods again and that one is the “I have eff-ing got this” nod.  

After Morgan passes us, something very special goes down, so representative of the Spirit of the Cabot Trail Relay.  Glenn Myers is running ahead of Morgan. This is his second leg of the relay.  Glenn shares later that he decided mid-race that his goal was to get Morgan in to a first place women’s finish. Glenn tells Morgan to draft off of him as long as she needs.  Morgan does.  An experienced racer knows how helpful it can be to just turn off and follow.  Glenn also helps Morgan through a couple of tough stretches that are inevitable when you are hammering.  

Glenn orders Morgan when to start her kick. 

Fiery Morgan (and Glenn) run all the way to another Female Win for the Women Hammers, 7th overall,  at….. 4:03/km pace!!!!!  SO FAR under record pace.  It’s the clutch performance that our team needed to get back in it.

We send some very special Road Hammer women love to Glenn.  

• 

• 

When I get my arms around Morgan at the finish line, my eyes are shining with tears. I am just so proud of her.  “Girl, that was the biggest performance yet!”  

Here, our team really starts to live this wild record breaking ride big.  I start with the actual tears in the car.  In my sleep deprived, proud mama state, I start gushing about Morgan and how proud I am of her and how well she ran and then I am crying over how Morgan really brought it when her team needed her the most.  

Record watch:  We are so deep that we can now count our cumulative time at the end of leg 15.  It’s 17:04:10.   Two legs left.  The record is burned into our minds.  19:22:57.  It’s coming back to us.

Leg 16: Colleen. Again.

Our record setter is ready for another crack at it.  Even with an extra 700m standing in the way.  See, the road washed out. There is a detour.  Adding an extra 700m. Neither this leg nor the entire relay will be adjusted to account for the extra 700m.  So if Colleen wants to break the standing leg record, her total time with the extra 700m is going to need to be faster than the standing record.  If anyone can dig deep enough to pull this off, it’s Colleen.  

The last carrot in pursuit of the record is not a carrot. It’s a cinnamon roll from the Dancing Goat. Purchased by Colleen and being saved for after her leg.  I tell her I will dangle it out the window.  She can’t have it unless she really brings it, lol.  

Colleen bursts off the line at gun-go and we patiently/not-so-patiently wait out our 10 minute window then we are off too.  Where is our record holder!?  We aren’t allowed to stop on this leg for safety on the detoured old road so we will only get one chance to see her.  

We come up on the field. So many people. Passing them, passing them, passing them.  They are more spread out at the pointy competitive end.  It seems like we have passed all 63 runners.

Figures up ahead.

The team support van loses its collective mind!!!!!  

COLLEEN is tucked in right behind the LEAD MEN!!  

Behind our Hammer Man Mustafa and friend of Hammers Blair Miller (the son). 

Coming up from behind, after passing nearly the whole field and finding her here, our Colleen, supreme boss, exactly where she wants to be, with the lead men, is one of the highlights of the relay.  We get an acknowledgement nod from our girl that also reads, “this is mine.”  In the squealing and crying, I can’t get to the cinnamon roll to dangle it.  I don’t need it.  Mustafa has become the dangling carrot.  

Mustafa is running his first relay and his first double ever.  He’s unfamiliar with the terrain and with how to run twice.  Blair and Colleen ran together collegiately.  Colleen tells us after that when we caught them, she had determined that the boys actually were not running fast enough for her.  “Come on boys, pick up, I have an agenda here.  Records.”  They picked up it.  

Now we are at the end of Leg 16, waiting, waiting, waiting.  Could she actually overcome a 700m handicap for her second record. Is it even possible?

Mustafa and Blair come in.  Mustafa keeps the lead for the win. Blair has a big run. 

Here comes Colleen.  The pace to break the standing record in a non-700m-extra year would have been 3:37/km.  Over 15.35km.  The pace to break the leg + 700m is 3:29/km.  She comes in third place overall, first woman, at a final pace of 3:33/km.  Time 56:54 for 15km.  It would have been a record in any other year.  Just incredible racing.   

Leg 17: Meaghan

Our relay experience and our pursuit of the record all comes down to leg 17, the aptly named Glory Leg.  Meaghan, who is having a stellar 2022, would close this out for us.  

As soon as Colleen finished Leg 16, we crunched the math.  How fast did Meaghan have to run in order for us to take down the record?  Britney scribbles on the now-epic scribble-record-page.  Colleen was very fast.  She gave the best cushion possible.  We are all yelling numbers, multiple phone calculators are out.  

With Colleen’s outstanding racing, our cumulative time is now 18:01:04.  Over the next 18.7km leg, we would need Meaghan to run 1:21:50 in order to break the record, which would be 4:18/km pace.  

We are in a circle at leg 16 (eating free pancakes, thanks Team Great Canadian Honking Goose). The record is within reach.  After waking up at 4:15am, wondering if the record slipped away in the wee hours of the morning (blew away in the gale force winds and driving rain), it’s really and truly within reach. We are all feeling a mix of emotions intensified by the sleep deprivation: elation, hopefulness, bad-ass-ness, OMG-are-we-really-going-to-pull-this-off nervousness.  It’s going to come down, as it should, to our last star.  Meaghan set a big half marathon PB in March in NYC, on a hard, hard course, with a pace of 4:01/km pace.  She just ran a 2:58 at Boston.  Performance-wise, we knew she had the chops for this, to put the final Hammer nail in the Angel’s coffin. 

But how much pressure would be too much pressure?  Leg 17 starts with 2km flat and then a 3.5km climb of the 150m high Hunter Mountain. Should we tell her what the final number is?

Queen-Captain Britney makes the call.  It’s her captain’s job. We are not telling her. It’s too much pressure.  The pressure risk is that the race goes sideways with it when the Hunter Mountain climb bleeds seconds off the pace goal.  Meaghan is a big leagues, game time racer.  She has the racing skills to race every ounce, every second out of herself.  We know she will go to the well for the team, whether she knows the number or not.  

Meanwhile, while we are a team-huddling this out, Meaghan is warming up with Kaili.  She’s nervous and excited, aka feeling exactly like she should.  She then stands in line for porta-pottie with husband (and team VIP) Brett, and he asks her what the number is.  She says she doesn’t know. He is puzzled, “I would have thought the team would know!!”  Meaghan laughs, “Oh those wild women know, they just won’t tell me!”  She knows that we know and she has accepted that a choice was made without her not to tell her.  What’s going to happen will happen.  

And yes, we all know now that what was about to happen is simply glorious.

We walk over to Meaghan. Final team hug and huddle.  Britney tells me that I need to do this final pep talk. I have about 15 steps to come up with something even better than what the number is. 

We hug Meaghan.  I go with: “Meaghan, it’s you now and you have all the speed, strength and love of the 16 women who came before you in your legs right now.  Go and get it.”

Meaghan lines up in front of the men.  Yes, girl, yes. 

The gun goes.  Our van has the 10 minute tag, we gotta wait 10 minutes before we are unleashed to find her.  Unseen by us, the Glory Dames woman starts out hot on Meaghan.  Meaghan had a plan for the first km.  The Glory Dames’ plan is faster so Meaghan does what the big leagues racer has to do, she responds.  SHE wants this win.  So she goes with it. 

As soon as they hit Hunter Mountain, Meaghan knows she has her and she pulls away. 

The cars are unleashed on the course.  In the van, we have Meaghan’s song, “She’s a MANIAC” blaring, we are cruising by most of the field, all of the women, where is our girl??

THERE SHE IS!!!!  

She knows it’s us coming because of the noise, the raucous accompanying the team van.  

Our Meaghan-Star is practically floating at full force speed up this dang Hunter Mountain. She could not look any faster, any more powerful, any more happy.  This moment is everything.  She blows us kisses and we scream and yell with tears flowing down our faces, blowing the kisses back.  Based on how strong she looks, we are as sure as we can be that we have this.  

Meaghan turns onto Swamp Road and has a long stretch of gravel road by herself.  Cars can’t follow.  She’s already outrun most of the field and the six lone wolf men in front of her are out of touch.  This section is lonely for her.  She says it was hard to keep hammering at it when it feels like you are running solo on the beach.  But she keeps hammering at it because it matters.  She is cycling through all the emotions that go with balls to the wall racing: I’ve got. I’ve blown it. I’m doing it. 

The trail climbs until the overpass on the outskirts of Baddeck.  Off the trail, there is 1km downhill and then the final 1km of glory where the full 1200 field of the relay line the final stretch to the finish line.  Meaghan hits the 1km downhill with a firm decision made, this km is to gather herself and then she will run that last km like she is living her best life, no matter how much racepain she is feeling.  That’s the job.  The job is to both to break the record but also to run this leg as a celebration of the beauty of having a team of fast and amazing women to tackle this audacious goal with. 

While she is gathering herself over this fast kilometer, we are all in our spot, lining the tunnel, close to the finish line, where we can see the clock.  Coach Lee has already questioned us up and down about the logic and benefit of not telling Meaghan the number.  Britney is steadfast, it’s the right call.  The lead men are in.  The minutes are ticking by, in agonizing slow motion.  We haven’t seen her since driving by her. It’s all blindness.  We have to idea what has actually unfolded over the 15km since we saw her.

So much chatter. Denise is here having a moment, wondering if Meaghan is about to break her leg 17 record, and would be pleased to see it because that’s what it’s all about.  Meaghan has 8 minutes to get here.  OMG, is that the lead female!? A collective holding of breath, is it our girl….. Gah, it’s just another guy. Ok, good job, guy. 

She has 7 minutes to arrive.  It’s 6 minutes.  That’s nearly a mile. We are down to 5 minutes.  It’s ok. That’s more than a kilometer.  It’s so much time. You can do alot in 5 minutes.

Meaghan enters that last kilometer scream tunnel. 

We see her.  We… explode. 

There are 4 minutes to spare. 

WE DID IT!

We get the high-fives from our star that we waited 275km for (and 2 years of no relay before that).  We had not made a plan for what would happen next but we all organically take off and run alongside the shute to the finish line. 

Meaghan finishes having no idea if it was enough.  It was everything she had. But no knowledge if it was enough.

Until we envelop her in our Strong Women JUBILANT CELEBRATION LOVE.  

The raw emotion of the moment is captured by our Team VIP Brett on video- go to his social media channels to see!  

It’s one of those things: you wonder how it will actually feel to take down a  7 year old all-time record and finally bring it to Nova Scotia after it’s been held by teams from Toronto and Maine for more than a decade.  You wonder.  You can’t know until you do it.  After, you can close your eyes and feel it again, over and over and over.

It’s Glory. 

The Banquet:

The banquet is a celebration in itself.  1200 runners gathered in a hockey rink to share in the relay’s victory. The biggest victory in this pandemic-recovery-world is that the relay happened.  Now we eat lobster, steak and carrot cake.

When the winning women are called to collect their prizes, we realize that the Hammer Women have won 10 of 17 legs and Paula Keating, Hammer on another team, won an additional leg.  Collecting our sock prizes is magnificent.  

Anticipating the announcement of our record…..is also magnificent.  We were all finally together in one stationary spot.  This record took all of us.  It was truly a team effort.  Each woman’s performance mattered.  Each woman’s attitude, grit, mental strength and tenacity mattered.  The way we supported each other and showed up for each other mattered.  Every single woman delivered at exactly the right moment and in exactly the right way.  This is so special. 

Finally, it is our turn to enjoy the standing ovation that comes with the announcement of the Female Winners along with the establishment of a new relay record of 19:18:07.

It’s magnificent glory.

Thank yous:

A standing ovation of thank yous goes to the Relay Race Committee, the Safety Crew and to Troy and team at Atlantic Chip to this massive undertaking. What you can achieve over 276km is really incredible and there would be none of this without you. Thank you.  

To our Road Hammer Women Team VIPs: Kaili, Coach Lee and Brett Ruskin- Céad Míle Fáilte, a 100 thousand thank yous.  

Kaili: We lost Kaili on relay leg to injury but we didn’t lose her on the team because we NEEDED her.  Kaili: as driver, cheerleader, #1 woman yelling “I LOVE YOU!” the loudest, we needed you to maintain our spirits on the road. You were our warm up partner, our hype girl, the one who believed in the audacious goal the most. You kept us running in the most beautiful way.  This victory is shared with you as much as it’s shared with 15 women who ran.

Coach Lee: not only did you plant the seed that we could break this record, you carefully watered it all spring in practice.  With a few choice coach words on the trail, that seed bloomed, yea?  Thank you!

Brett: team agent, team cheerleader, personal team videojournalist, we are so lucky to have you share your energy and skills with us.  You pump our tires and we run faster and with more togetherness.

To the 14 women who I had the great pleasure of running this with, the dream team, my running sisters, it was a great pleasure to capture our 276km journey here and to hold up your athletic prowess for the “world” to see you the way that I see you.  I am sending 19 hours, 18 minutes and 7 seconds of love to all of you.  xoxo Erin.