Thursday Cruise Crew impresses at first relay competition
The Thursday Cruise Crew running club made its first official presence on a results page, entering a team in the 2021 running of the Christmas Relays, hosted by the West Valley Track Club. Or at least, it was supposed to, but a technical glitch resulted in Team 167 appearing not as "Team TCC", but instead as "Team Sam Parker" on the results list. Club secretary Sam Parker accepts no blame for this issue, which was entirely someone else's fault. Parker would also like to clarify that the team did not run to raise money for a tragic story of hardship and/or medical research in honor of someone sharing his name, despite the team name definitely sounding like that.
The Christmas Relays consists of four runners each running a counterclockwise loop around Lake Merced, a rolling 4.5 miles of pavement with clean footing and sight lines. It is traditionally a hunting ground for many of the Bay Area's strongest runners, and this year was no exception, with multiple 2:19-caliber marathoners in the field. The TCC squad for the weekend was planned to be Tom Coyle, Thomas Graham, and Sam Parker, but a guest fourth runner was proving hard to pin down. It was not until 1:15am the morning of the race that club member in moderate standing Rory Beyer accepted an invitation to be the fourth. This was a great relief to Coyle, who was otherwise set up to run both the opening and anchor legs of the relay.
Keeping in the tradition of the Christmas Relays event, the team chose to get creative with its attire. Wisely choosing against some of the extremely garish costumes present on the course, the men each donned race kits from the Stanford XC/T&F program, with Coyle and Parker making the bold choice to don one-piece speed suits for the long-ish race. Fortunately the outfits were appreciated by a large number of Stanford-affiliated spectators at the race, in addition to some well-intentioned whistles at the spandex get-ups.
Conditions were perfect for a fast race, with overcast skies and still air in the low 50's. Parker was selected to lead off, and he employed his textbook footspeed to get out hard with the leaders for the first 150 meters, which was definitely a serious race tactic and not at all for the cameras. He then settled into a still-aggressive 5:30 pace, which he maintained for the entire lap of the lake, handing off in 24:36. Graham was up next, and set out clad in a cardinal red beanie and with his trusty iPhone in his hand. Still feeling the effects of a hard workout with Coyle earlier in the week, he passed two runners and made it back to the exchange zone to hand off with 49:55 on the clock. Beyer ran a very respectable leg, averaging just under 5:19's to hand off to Coyle for the anchor. Coyle did the speedsuit proud, channeling the power of the spandex and Nike Alphafly's to drop a very impressive 4:48 pace for the loop of the lake, passing many competitors and lapping a ridiculous number of slower teams. The team's final time of 1:35:18 was good for 7th place, a very solid performance.