finally, a ragnar post :)

About the RAGNAR

My team: Speed Sold Separately

This is Cami, who was our team captain, who also ran the RAGAR at 5 months pregnant with TWINS! She was pretty much our hero.

I loved this! (I am a LOTR fan)

putting on our ragnar tatoos

sleeping on the gym floor

This is at the last hand off, waiting for runner #11 to come in

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(sorry for the layout of this post. sometimes blogger is irritating, and I'm too impatient to switch all the pictures around)


OK. So because 1 person requested to hear about the RAGNAR I will do a post. It was a little over 2 weeks ago, that I piled in the van with these 5 lovely ladies to embark on my first RAGNAR experience (notice I didn't say last). We did the Northwest Passage Relay, which as I mentioned before is a relay race that starts in Blaine, WA and ends on Whidbey Island, WA. It was a total of 190 miles. There were 12 of us on our team. The 6 of us in the picture below are from Van #2.

Our van only had to drive to Bellingham, WA because that is where our first runner would start. Between all of us, we each ran 3 times in the same rotating order. I was runner #8. We all had different miles and each of our legs varied in difficulty. My legs were: 2.8 miles, 7.7 miles and 4.8 miles. Mentally, the 7.7 mile run was the hardest. And it was at night (I started around 11pm), but I felt pretty good after it anyway. Physically, those last 4.8 miles were really hard for me. After doing the half marathon and prior to doing the RAGNAR, I got into a running rut (frankly, I am still trying to climb out of it) and so I didn't really "train" as hard as I should have for this relay. My body was sore from my 1st two legs, I had only gotten roughly 2 hours of crappy sleep on a gym floor (hey, that's part of the experience I guess) and to top it off I got my period. Anyway, I struggled to finish those last 4.8 miles. I tried to pep talk myself and AC/DC myself the entire way. I just realized that I had never pushed my body this much before and when I finally finished that leg, something came over me and I just started crying. It was really weird.





























































So, more about the RAGNAR. It was a lot of fun. I definitely recommend doing it. Everything from the individual team names, to the costumes, to the decorated cars, to the lack of sleep, torturing your body (just a little). It was all just a great experience. There as a great feeling of team spirit among all of the participants. It was fun being at the major exchanges (where the last runner in van 1 and the first runner in van 2 would hand off) because they were the biggest and everyone was cheering for each other as we all came in.

So, in a nutshell, I would do it again in a heart beat! Pure fun, even amidst the painful parts.





(below: me finishing my first leg. I was running down hill. there was a lot of bounce going on in this picture...ugh)