Worst Case Scenario

On Saturday, after my long run, I had to rush through my stretching and icing routine, shower, dress and head out the door.

We had a Cabot Trail Relay Race date...

...with some of our opponents.

Apparently there are three teams from Niagara heading to Cape Breton in less than a month.

Considering the craziness of this whole event, I find it pretty surprising that there are three groups of 17 runners from our neck of the woods. Even crazier is that the other two groups have done this race multiple times - in fact one group has run it 11 years in a row.

I feel like we're preparing to embark on some weird, cult-like adventure. I'm guessing there will be secret handshakes...

Anyway, so on Saturday, a run was scheduled and runners from all three groups gathered to do either a 9k, 14k or 17k run together. I had 20k to run and I wasn't about to join the speed demons so I did my run and joined them afterwards for the potluck lunch. I walked into a house of fabulously fit people and did my best to blend.

We feasted on some delicious, healthy, runner food which included salmon, quinoa salad, mango salad, saag paneer and banana bread. We watched a video (on VHS - which felt so 90s) of a race from a few years ago. It was very helpful because we could see what runners in each leg were going to be facing and we also got a sense of how busy the roads get with all the runners and support vehicles. Halfway through the video, I turned to Klari and said "I'm glad we're all signed up and everyone has paid for their flight before we watched this". She laughed and agreed wholeheartedly. It's pretty intimidating to watch a video of a runner struggling up a hill only to have the camera zoom out and see how much farther they still have to climb.

Glad I'm driving...

"So" says Klari, "you ran 20k today eh? That's great that you're all recovered."

Yeeesssss...?

"So, if we needed you to run a leg of the relay, you could."

ummmmmm...

See, one of our runners is injured. We're still crossing our fingers that he might be able to pull it off but we need a contingency plan. And, because of how easy it is to get injured, we really need a contingency plan for that contingency plan. So, apparently I'm now a possible contingency.

Here's the deal. There are several reasons why I agree to drive for these relays rather than run.

• I'm faster than I was but I'm not fast. Runners eat up the road out there and there's no part of me that wants to watch the herd pull away and struggle on behind them. 
• I have diabetes (yep, I admit it) and I'm ok with crazy blood sugars ruining a race for me but the thought of being out there with a van load of people supporting me and having to walk because my sugar is 20...or 2.0 just plain sucks. I don't like when diabetes affects other people and I don't want us to come in fourth because Céline had a low. 
• I have a half marathon that I'm training for which is the very next weekend. I don't want to run the Cabot Trail and leave my half marathon somewhere on the East Coast. 

But I get it. We might be in trouble and we might need to ask a runner, or even two, to run more than one leg. Considering the difficulty of the terrain, that's a lot to ask.

So I made it very clear that me running was the worst case scenario but that I would do it...as long as I got the shortest, easiest leg of the run.

And now we leave it up to the running gods to decide my fate.