There's no way I'm going to be able to whittle down this recap to one post. So, without further ado I present Ragnar Recap: Part I!
Friday morning 5:30 am and I'm out of bed! Even though I had showered the night before I hopped in to wash my hair again quickly, hoping to deter the grease fest that I knew was coming as long as possible. We were out the door by 6 am to drop the dogs off at the boarders. Then we picked up two of our teammates who lived locally. Next step: Drive 45 minutes out to West Chester and meet the rest of the team, load up the vans, and drive out to Lancaster for our 11:30 am start!
Somehow our team got the latest starting time. By the time the gun went off and our van #1 started other teams had been running for 5 hours! I guess our anticipated average 8:12 pace was faster than a lot of the other teams. I admitted right away to my team that I was probably not "as fast as advertised." Good thing no one on the team was in this thing for the finish time! We all just wanted to have fun, which is exactly what we did.
After van #1 got going we took some time to decorate our van #2. Even though Mike couldn't run, he graciously offered to drive our van. He also ended up being a fantastic artist and drew us two pretty sweet mustangs in honor of the team name!
Once that was done we headed for exchange #6, where we would make the switch with van #1. Luckily some of the other people on my team are just as anal and organized as me and they drew up a projected time/distance schedule based on each person's 10k pace. Following that, van #1 was projected to arrive at the exchange around 3:30 pm, so we had a few hours to kill at the exchange....
13 minutes after the expected arrival time, Sloan from van #1 rolled in and Kevin from our van was off! I didn't know what to expect when our van was the "on van," but it went a little like this:
I've got to say, I was pretty nervous for my first leg. I didn't end up paying much attention to the directions, but we'd all noticed that the course was marked very well, so we weren't too worried about it. My first leg was expected to start around 5 pm and was 6.4 miles "Hard." This meant that I had to load up on the required nighttime reflective gear as official nighttime hours were 5:30 pm - 6:30 am. Nighttime gear includes: reflective vest, white headlight, red LED taillight. All van members are also required to wear the vests (but not the lights) even when they are not running. The race staff was very strict about this!
I took off as soon as Sally passed the slap bracelet, hoping my calves would cooperate as they had still been a bit of a problem the last few weeks. I flew out at a 7:50 something pace and decided rather quickly to reel it in. It wasn't that hot out (low 70s), but we'd been standing in the sun so I was already quite warmed up. My legs felt like bricks and I immediately knew I had worn the wrong shoes. Luckily I brought three pairs along so I wouldn't have anymore issues for later legs :)
I felt better by the time I saw my van 2 miles in. I still had energy to give the ol' thumbs up, something that became impossible to do during later legs. Running through Amish country was beautiful. My route was on backroads past corn fields and farms. The only annoying thing about the area was the unexpectedly powerful smell of manure and the loads of knats that kept flying into my mouth and up my nose (note to self: close mouth when running). I pushed through to the end and passed the slap bracelet onto Betsy.
I didn't have too much time to revel in my first Ragnar leg as I was running the leg after Betsy and she had a short one. 40 minutes later I was back in action: 5.9 miles "Hard." By this time the sun was going down and reflective gear was actually necessary. I switched to a long sleeve tee since the temperature had dropped quite a bit in those 40 minutes.
My second leg went SO much better. I switched my shoes and my legs felt warmed up. Almost immediately after I started another runner came up from behind and joined me. She was running a real ultra team (6 runners) and was going at a pretty quick pace (at least for me). Previous to seeing her none of our team had encountered any other runners on the route so it was refreshing to see someone else! I kept up with her pace and we chatted for about 2 miles before I had to slow it down.
I will also attribute my speedier pace this leg to the fact that I was scared shitless running alone in the dark along the backroads. I am easily spooked and as I started passing dark farm after dark farm Children of the Corn and Texas Chainsaw Massacre kept flashing through my head. There's nothing like the fear of abduction, death, or rape to keep you moving fast!
I finished in a better-than-projected time and allowed our van to help recoop some of the time that van #1 lost. Little did we know that this was the last time that would happen in this relay...
Our last runner finished leg #12 around 8:30 pm and we made the exchange with van #1. Then, it was time to relax! Unfortunately I couldn't relax too much. When I got back from my second leg I found out that Mike had lost the camera! The same camera that had already taken at least a hundred precious Ragnar pictures! Then a miracle happened: we were leaving the exchange to get back in the van and a random runner came to us and said "Are you team #1? I found your camera." NO WAYYYYYYYY! Good thing I had taken an obnoxious number of photos of our van so that he could tell what team we were. Thanks a lot Team Wicked Pissahs!
Stay tuned for Ragnar Recap: Part II to find out how I got through my 2 am legs!
Friday morning 5:30 am and I'm out of bed! Even though I had showered the night before I hopped in to wash my hair again quickly, hoping to deter the grease fest that I knew was coming as long as possible. We were out the door by 6 am to drop the dogs off at the boarders. Then we picked up two of our teammates who lived locally. Next step: Drive 45 minutes out to West Chester and meet the rest of the team, load up the vans, and drive out to Lancaster for our 11:30 am start!
Somehow our team got the latest starting time. By the time the gun went off and our van #1 started other teams had been running for 5 hours! I guess our anticipated average 8:12 pace was faster than a lot of the other teams. I admitted right away to my team that I was probably not "as fast as advertised." Good thing no one on the team was in this thing for the finish time! We all just wanted to have fun, which is exactly what we did.
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| Here we go! Sloan on the far left starts us off (with a big #1 on his bib!) |
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| Mike the artist |
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| We literally were "Team #1" - Sally was the first person to register! |
Once that was done we headed for exchange #6, where we would make the switch with van #1. Luckily some of the other people on my team are just as anal and organized as me and they drew up a projected time/distance schedule based on each person's 10k pace. Following that, van #1 was projected to arrive at the exchange around 3:30 pm, so we had a few hours to kill at the exchange....
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| Playground fun |
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| Van #2 |
13 minutes after the expected arrival time, Sloan from van #1 rolled in and Kevin from our van was off! I didn't know what to expect when our van was the "on van," but it went a little like this:
- See exchange of runners, cheer them on, snap photo
- Drive to halfway point of runner's leg, pull over, cheer them on when they pass, offer fuel/water, snap photo
- Drive to next exchange, prep next runner (ie. if you are the runner go to the porta potty 5,000 times)
- Back to number #1, log arrival/departure time of runners to see how far off estimate we are, repeat step
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| Standing by as van support for Kevin! |
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| Run Kevin! |
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| First exchange for our van |
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| C'mon Sally! |
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| Sally races a buggy |
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| Suited up and ready to start |
I felt better by the time I saw my van 2 miles in. I still had energy to give the ol' thumbs up, something that became impossible to do during later legs. Running through Amish country was beautiful. My route was on backroads past corn fields and farms. The only annoying thing about the area was the unexpectedly powerful smell of manure and the loads of knats that kept flying into my mouth and up my nose (note to self: close mouth when running). I pushed through to the end and passed the slap bracelet onto Betsy.
I didn't have too much time to revel in my first Ragnar leg as I was running the leg after Betsy and she had a short one. 40 minutes later I was back in action: 5.9 miles "Hard." By this time the sun was going down and reflective gear was actually necessary. I switched to a long sleeve tee since the temperature had dropped quite a bit in those 40 minutes.
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| Reverse color twins |
I will also attribute my speedier pace this leg to the fact that I was scared shitless running alone in the dark along the backroads. I am easily spooked and as I started passing dark farm after dark farm Children of the Corn and Texas Chainsaw Massacre kept flashing through my head. There's nothing like the fear of abduction, death, or rape to keep you moving fast!
I finished in a better-than-projected time and allowed our van to help recoop some of the time that van #1 lost. Little did we know that this was the last time that would happen in this relay...
Our last runner finished leg #12 around 8:30 pm and we made the exchange with van #1. Then, it was time to relax! Unfortunately I couldn't relax too much. When I got back from my second leg I found out that Mike had lost the camera! The same camera that had already taken at least a hundred precious Ragnar pictures! Then a miracle happened: we were leaving the exchange to get back in the van and a random runner came to us and said "Are you team #1? I found your camera." NO WAYYYYYYYY! Good thing I had taken an obnoxious number of photos of our van so that he could tell what team we were. Thanks a lot Team Wicked Pissahs!
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| The dude who found our camera |
this is amazing!!! tell me more! I want to do it so badly!
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