The Rookie's Ragnar Review

***Okay Nancy Pants, I am writing you your Ragnar post. It was such a huge event and I only took a mere 270 pictures, so its a little tricky to know where to start. . . but I'll just dive in.***

If I had to describe this event in one word, I'd try and choose from: amazing, adventerous, grueling, ridiculous, exhausting, exhilarating, crazy fun. Any one of those words would work. In case you're not familiar with the Ragnar Race I'll give you a brief run down: Basically its a super long relay race that goes non-stop for a day a night and a day. Each team has 12 team members (unless you're a crazy ultra runner team, then you have only 6) and the Del Sol race started in Prescott AZ and ended at Tempe Market Place--204 miles later--the next day. You divide up into two vans and pass your "baton" (think 80's slap bracelet) all along the route from runner # 1 down to runner # 12, repeated 3 times until you finally arrive at the finish line. Did you catch that each runner runs 3 legs? Or that you run through the night without sleeping? Or that you're crammed into a mini van for two days? All this is true, and yet its an awesome bonding experience! Though I didn't know the girls on my team well (except for Reachel), they were each wonderful, amazing women and excellent athletes (nice of them to let little ol me join them, don't ya think? When the girls on my team found out this was my "first race" they were extra encouraging to me!) I love each one of them.

(this is my van, minus amazing Christy who was running her last 9 miles)

My first leg (Runner # 9)

My first leg was my longest: 6.7 miles up some grueling hills. It was like this: steep mountain, short plateau, steep mountain, short plateau, steep mountain, you see the pattern, right? I had to work hard to keep my mental game on that I was gonna be able to do this and that I would make it to the finish line. Sometimes I noticed that my body was split into two halves. . .like my arms were pumping like I was running, but my feet weren't really come up off the ground. . .hmmm. . .strange. . .I kept waving to Mylie and Bono and Chris, reminding myself that I had trained for this (even if that darn IT band had kept me from training for the last month). And I made it, girls, I made it to the top! I count it a huge success that I didn't pee my pants.

Van 2 Now Done with first legs:

After everybody had run their legs we passed off to van number 1 again, right at twilight as the sun had gone down. It was great to see all the van one girls! We wished them well and tried to stay warm as now it was getting really, really cold, then headed over to an elementary school where we could pay 2 bucks to use their bathrooms and lie down on their floor for a couple of hours. I tell ya, I'd a paid em 5 dollars just to use a real toliet and wash my hands in warm water! Using the portables gets old real fast:

Then Paige and I found the very best spot in the whole school for our rest: the library. Remember your elementary school library? Picture that with all the tables and chairs stacked in the corner and then 20 sweaty and exhausted strangers strewn about on sleeping bags trying to get some rest. I was not super excited to lay down to Mr. I Wear Strange Snowboarding Hats, so we went behind the library desk and found a spot behind an aisle of books where nobody had landed yet. I laid on the hard floor and wrapped myself up in a thin fleece blanket with running clothes under my knees to keep me comfortable. It wasn't long before I convinced myself that I was ultra comfortable, pretending that the sound of the man breathing on the other side of the book shelves was really the sound of the ocean waves rocking back and forth. It was 8:30 p.m. and I need to be back to the van by 11:00 p.m. to take over our next shift and I was nearly dozing when my cell phone rang! Yep, right there in the middle of all those sleeping exhausted runners, my sweet heart tried to track me down and I had to press ignore. I may have actually fallen asleep at some point, maybe fore 20 or 30 minutes, but mostly I was just in relaxation mode. Before I knew it my alarm went off to get back in the van. When I came too, there was a couple in a lover's embrace at my feet, my main way out of the building. No way could I have stepped over those two. So I meandered around and realized I was actually going to have to step over Mr. I Wear Strange Snowboarding Hats to get to the door. This was a big long man, I have short legs and I am holding a pillow, a blanket and my duffle bag. Do you think I made it safely over him? Nope. I lost my balance with one leg one one side and one leg on the other side swaying forward, backward, foward, backward trying not to completely crumple onto the slumbering stranger! Then I stepped on the poor man. An "ouch" penetrate the silent room and I whispered a sincere "sorry!" and finally made it outta there.

Leg 2 takes a tragic turn
After visiting with our husbands (and snagging some celebrated Celebrex) we started back up. Reachel did 8 miles in the dark, starting around midnight and then passed off to Christy who had a huge 9.3 mile leg. She was doing awesome and only a mile and a half away from the transition to my 5 mile turn, when 3 ambulences came tearing past us, lights flashing, sirens blarring. There had been an accident only a mile ahead of us. . .all traffic came to a hault (picture the 350 support vans stuck on the road here) A cop told us to forget about our runner and turn around! OF course we didn't forget about our runner, we picked her up and put her in the car. When we heard helicopters come in for life flight, we knew tradgedy had struck and later found out that an 18 year old guy had been hit by a car while supporting a teammate (i.e. taking water across the street to his runner--he was not wearing his reflective vest). It was heart breaking to try to piece together what had happened. I feel so bad for this young man and his family--he is not expected to make it. Ragnar is going to have to seriously rethink how they structure these night runs in the future, as they're just not as safe as they assumed. They canceled all the rest of the night legs (rightly so) but it took us at least an hour of confusion to get that information. I didn't get to run my five miles that night.

Hotel Time
And Nancy, I'm trying to give you a lot of details, like I was telling you this in person, ya know? But really, its such a long and drawn out story!! So the rest goes like this: ONe of the girls in Van 1 decided to "gift" the team a hotel in Cave Creek. . . it happened to be at a resort I'd stayed in for my anniversary before, so I knew it was nice. We slept in the car all cramped up for an hour from 5:00 to 6:00 a.m. and then switched van one spots in the room. They went and ran that morning while we tried to get a little bit of sleep and stretch out. I slept from 6:30ish to 8:30 on the money when I woke up to crazy leg pain. The celebrex had worn off, baby and I could feel every tightened fiber in that entire IT band. It felt like it had turned to metal, stiff as a board. I tried to go back to sleep for a while, but it wasn't happening. So I got up and did yoga in the bathroom so as not disturb my teammates still in bed. Then I showered and by 10:00 they were up and getting ready. We left the hotel at 11:00 and van 1 handed off to us at 12:00 in Fountain Hills.

Watching Super Woman Fly and Leg 3
I haven't mentioned too much about each of my teammates and their mad skills in this post, though I certainly could sing their praises, but I just have to say that Reachel's third leg (she was one of only 2 people in van 2 who got to run their 3 full legs) was astonishing! Her hills were crazy-- up and down (like think of the hills where the Kenny's lived behind the guard gate only worse). We watched her come into the finish line and the woman was flying. Like leaping through the air like a gazelle sprinter with both feet high off the ground. Can you tell I'm proud of my sister in law? She passed off to Christy (for another grueling 9 mile stretch) and we went to the transition to wait out my turn. This was fun because we met up with the boys and Sweet Handsome decided to run my last 3.3 mile leg with me. I did not think this was going to be hard, as I felt rested, my celebrex had taken my leg pain away, and I was looking forward to hanging out with Beyonce and the Ting-Tings for my short Saturday morning "Fun Run." We did yoga before I started.

But I was wrong. My 3.3 miles was excrucitingly hard for me. Way harder than my 6.7 the previous afternoon. My leg was killing me and felt like with each step I would crumple to the gravel in a pathetic heap ready to die. Handsome saved the day by making me take my ear phone out and telling me stories of his van's adventures the night before when they dined at Denny's in Wickenberg at 2:00 a.m. I found that if I galloped with my left leg straight, I could keep myself from crying (I did NOT cry people!) And I did manage to get my speed up once I saw the transition shoot. Before that it was a pathetic hobble run/skip thing. Seriously, it felt just as hard as giving birth to twins with no epidural. Probably a good thing I didn't run 5 miles in the night, too, huh? I took another celebrex when I got done!

Then it got fun again! Auburn inspired me by running her next 3 miles at a 7:30 pace--and the girl is 12 weeks pregnant! I took a lot of pictuers of my teammates and we met up at Tempe Market place to watch Paige come flying across the finish line and we all ran behind her screaming and cheering.

(Paige, Reachel, Auburn and Christy)

In the end I'd say I loved it.
I'd sign up again in a heart beat.
Hood to Coast anyone?