Ragnar 2012

I've always wanted to try a Ragnar.  It's a crazy relay race where you have a team of 12 people, 2 vans, and you run 200 miles.  You start on Friday, run all day and through the night finishing sometime Saturday afternoon.  The way it works is one van (6 runners) all take a turn running and then the second van of runners take over and while they are all running, van 1 is able to rest, shower, eat, and possibly sleep.  (If you call sleeping on a gym floor with hundreds of other runners coming in and out, fire alarms going off, and snoring sleeping then that's what we did - sleep).  It sounds a bit crazy, but it was really, really FUN!

We started out with a family spaghetti feed at the Summer's House.  Steve was our team captain and not only organized everything, but hosted this fun evening.  Our families helped us decorate the van and wished us luck as we pulled away.

 

 

 

Our team name - that's why we all have headbands!!

 We stayed in a hotel that night and got up early Friday morning to send off our first runner. 

Here is everyone from our van.  Mark Casey, Zeke Evans, Stephanie Evans, Steve Summers, Me, and Shannon Lacey.

 We took this picture at the start line to show that the Canadian border is right behind us.  Steve was off running.

 Here I am passing off to Stephanie.  

You wear a slap bracelet that you pass to your runner at the exchanges.

Once van 2 took over, we got some lunch and went to a designated High School where we could shower and get a little rest.  None of us had slept great the night before, and we had gotten up early that morning to run in the rain.  It felt so nice to be warm and dry.

Sleeping was another story.  I referred to this as our non-nap.

I tossed and turned and once I finally fell asleep, the fire alarm went off.  It was soo loud!!  We all had to evacuate and everything.  There was no fire, something about construction that had triggered it.

Then, there was all sorts of clanging and banging while they tried to change some filter to prevent it from happening again.
Awesome.
Good thing it was at the beginning of our race and we could just laugh about it.
I actually slept much better in similar circumstances (minus the fire alarm and clanging and banging) later that evening.

When you have a runner out, you drive ahead and park so you can cheer them on, give them water, or in this case dance on the van to get them pumped up!

 

Mark was running and we could see him coming.  He had two runners slightly ahead of him, but we could see that he was gaining on them and would be passing them right about the time he approached our van.  We started blaring our music and it couldn't have been more perfect.  Just as he was running by, he passed both of the runners to the words    "Dun.. Dun.. Dun.. another one bites the dust!"

One of my favorite parts of the whole race!

We had a late dinner while van 2 was running, and then chose sleep over a shower.

 

It was crazy to wake up and see 3 gyms and the hallways full of sleeping runners everywhere, even under the drinking fountain.

 I've never before ran in complete darkness.  Kinda cool.

Our van finished quite early in the day and had some time to hang out at the finish line while we waited for van 2.

 Shannon, me, Stephanie

 Here we all are.. van 1 and van 2

Totally crazy!

Totally fun!

I'd totally do it again!