Ragnar Las Vegas

Running addles your brain. That's the only conclusion I can come up with for why people would pay to run a ridiculous number of miles, "sleep" in a van, really be going on no sleep at all and then call it fun, but I have now signed up for this insanity twice. Four times if you count Ragnar trail, which was marginally better since we had a tent to sleep in, but still.

This time it was Las Vegas. My friend Leslie had a few people drop from the team she was on and asked if I wanted to go. The registration fee was already paid so I'd just be responsible for food and gas. That makes me less crazy right? I didn't have to pay extravagant amounts of money to run like a crazy person? At any rate we had a great time.

We got down to Vegas Thursday night and my cousin Rick came and picked me up for dinner. It was lucky I had called him the day before for my November grateful challenge, since I forgot he was living in Vegas. It was nice to chat with him and he won the prize for best cousin when he brought be sunscreen before my first leg and then stayed the whole time, moving along the route to cheer me on.

Friday morning we got up at 3:30 to get ready and head out. Sadly I hadn't really slept. I guess I was sleeping, but it wasn't a sound sleep and I didn't feel rested at all. I was runner 6, so it was kind of warm by the time it was my turn to run. I thought it was going to be awful, but it turned out to be not so bad.

We went back to the house to shower and nap, but again I was "sleeping" but didn't feel rested when I got up. We headed out for our second legs and I must say this was the most entertaining part of the trip for me. Two of my teammates were high school boys. They were so funny as we waited at the exchange for leg 2. I just laid on my seat in the van and listened to them sing their hearts out. Super Tramp of all things. It was very entertaining. My night run was my longest one. It was decent. I like running at night, but it was mostly in residential areas with lots of street lights so I couldn't even see the moonlight for most of it. Lame. My phone said I ran an 8 minute mile. Just shows that the GPS tracking on your phone isn't always very accurate. :) After leg 2 we headed to a hotel. I slept like a rock there, but sadly it was short lived as we had to get up 2.5 hours later to go run. I was feeling pretty awful at that point and I'm pretty sure I would have died if we hadn't had the van that I could sleep in for a couple more hours.

This is what we looked like a lot between runs and in the end. Completely wasted, sore and smelly. After my last run we headed back to the house and I showered super fast so I could go to lunch with my friend Casey. I don't think I have seen him since he moved in June so it was fun to catch up with him. We even did a little shopping which turned out to be very entertaining as well.

We decided to skip the finish line since we had to drive back to Provo. It was a long drive and I was very tired, but when we hit the rumble strips a couple times, I decided I better stay awake and help the driver stay awake. Better tired and alive than dead. :)

It was a much better overall experience than Ragnar Colorado. Having a van makes a huge difference. I was nervous about having two 17 year-olds on my team, but they turned out to be one of the highlights of the team. For only knowing one person on my team going into it, I was pleasantly surprised and would definitely do another Ragnar, provided I don't have to pay the entry fee and we have a van.

Ragnar Colorado

Sometimes your friends get you to do dumb things without even trying. Like run a Ragnar when you haven't been training and have been struggling to run 3 miles on 8 hours of sleep, but that's exactly what Brenda got me to do. Run Ragnar with absolutely no training.
She had been on the Ragnar team for a couple of months. She ran it last year and was happy to do it again this year even though she didn't have much time to train with all of her school stuff. Friday the first she messaged me and asked if I wanted to do it too, since the other team was still short runners. I've wanted to try a regular road Ragnar since I did trail last year and this seemed like a good opportunity. It was a sponsored team so all I had to pay for was food and gas and Brenda said it was a beautiful run. I thought about it over the weekend, recruited my friend Spencer to come too and we committed to the team on Monday.
Thursday morning we had two people drop out and we still weren't sure on the vehicle situation. It was really starting to give me anxiety. We finally got the runner situation figured out, van 1 would just take our leg 7 and we would just do a 5 man team in van 2. Since we were only going to have 5 runners, our team captain decided we would just take her car to save on gas.
Thursday night we left Provo at about 7 and headed for Colorado. It was a long drive, but we made pretty good time and crashed as soon as we got to the hotel. We only got about 4.5 hours of sleep (if we were lucky) and then the other team's van 1 was up and getting ready to leave. Brenda, Spencer and I had nothing to do about 6 hours waiting for van 1 to get to the exchange and for our other two teammates to get there. We sat around at the "lake" at the resort for a while and tried to not be too bored, but I think we were all glad to get things started.
 Brenda was our first runner. It was pretty warm and she had a long run. She ended up running even longer, because it was a moving exchange and we were pretty far down. I was the next runner and I was afraid between the heat and the altitude I was going to die, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It was beautiful and I just might be in love with Colorado.

3 runners later and we were at a rec center sleeping on the gym floor.

It wasn't the best sleep I've ever had and it was only about two hours before we were packing our stuff back to the car and driving to the next exchange. Some vans really get into the whole thing and decorate their vans and it is awesome. This was one of my favorites.

It was about 2 in the morning at this point and we were running through Glenwood canyon. I was sad we were running it at night because it looked like it would be a beautiful canyon, but it was a great night run and we had an awesome moon!

 Luckily after this run we got to stay in a hotel. I slept much better there for about 3 hours and then we were dragging our sorry selves back out to the car for our last round of running. I was pretty gross and super tired by this time. My last run was really hot and even though it was only 3.3 miles it was slower than I've run in a LONG time, which is saying something since I've been so slow the last 3 months.
I was so glad when I was finished. The last three runners did great and we actually made pretty good time. We had a while to wait for our last runner. We got cleaned up a bit and Brenda caught a few zzzz's

and then we were off to wait for Spencer at the finish line. I was SOOO glad to be done and then we just had to wait around for everyone to be ready to drive us back to our car at the starting line.

Sadly it was a two hour drive to the car and then the six hour drive to get home. We left the finish line at about 6 and left for home and about 8:45. We stopped for pizza because we were starving and wanted some "real" food and then we just pushed it through the night. It was nice having 3 people in the car so two could keep each other awake and the third could sleep. We pulled into Provo at about 3:30 a.m. 8:30 church was definitely NOT going to happen so Brenda and I dragged ourselves out of our house for an 11:30 ward. We barely made it through sacrament meeting and then came home and crashed.
It was a fun weekend, but I don't know if I'm really cut out for road Ragnar. I think I'll stick to trail.

Ragnar 2013

Ragnar. It was hard. Trail running is not for sissies. Pretty sure my training was far far far from what it should have been. They should have told us we needed to find a beach, that's also a hill a mile high and just run up it a million times. Anyway, we planned to leave Friday morning at 8. We may have left not on time and then we stopped for lunch longer than we should have.

We were suppose to be there at 12:30 to check in and our start time was 2:30. We pulled in to park the truck at about 1:30 and then we had to wait for a tram to pick us up and ALL OF OUR CRAP and take us to the campground.

Charlie was our first runner, so we finally got all our stuff sent Charlie to the start line and he barely had time to ask for a wrist band when they started our heat. Off he went on the green trail. 3.5 miles. I was up next so I grabbed my running gear and headed for the bathroom while everyone else transported our stuff to our camp site. Darn! I wasn't there to help carry it all. I wasn't ready very long before I had to get to the start/finish line and wait for Charlie to come in for my leg of the race. He made good time and handed the timing chip off to me and then I was off to the yellow trail. 3 p.m.  4 miles. 83 degrees. gained 400 feet in a mile. That's about the same incline that stairs have. And I didn't drink much water before I got there and didn't take any with me. FAIL. Needless to say the yellow trail was my least favorite. I pretty much hated it a whole bunch. Didn't make awful time, all things considered, handed off to Kyna for the red trail and then went to camp to find some fluid. After I got some Gatorade and water I felt pretty darn good.
Camp was an interesting site. Just lots and lots and lots of tents everywhere.

We had three tents tucked in with a whole bunch of other people. We'd wait a round for a while until we got to the estimated time we thought the runner would be coming in and then we'd walk over to cheer them on as they came to the finish. I didn't run my next leg of the race until 11:00 p.m. I had the green trail. 3.5 miles in the nice cool darkness. I had a head lamp, but I didn't love it. There was a full moon and for most of it, that was enough. I had a couple stumbles, but didn't actually go down until around mile 2.5 on a very flat road of soft sand, I didn't see a little rock, tripped and ended up on my back staring up at the moon. After laying there for a few seconds, I got up and continued on. I kind of wish someone on my team had been there to witness it. I thought it was hilarious and I'm sure they would have enjoyed it as well. Ran the last half mile, up those lame sauce switch backs that every trail ended in, like a boss and finished in pretty good time. LOVED the green trail. Went to camp, changed my clothes, ate a granola bar and went to bed. Probably not my greatest plan, but I was tired.
Woke up around 6-ish and got ready for my last leg of the race. The long red trail, 7.5 miles. Cheered Charlie in as he finished his last leg and then left on mine with the sun just starting to peak over the horizon. The temps were awesome and the trail was beautiful. Our team volunteer was at the water station and it was great to have someone I knew cheering for me AND give me some food since I failed to eat anything and was super hungry. Came in somewhat strong and got some food first thing. Took it right out of my teammates hand. It felt so good to be done! Back to camp to eat and sit around, getting up occasionally to go cheer a teammate on as they came in. Poor Brenda and Jarom. They had the worst times for running. They both had to run their first two in the dark and their last one in the heat. :/ They ran it like champs though. I had it pretty good, all things considered.
I started getting pretty sore after that and headed to get a massage. That helped a bit, but it wasn't too good. We all put on our awesome shirts we made and went to wait for Jarom to come in for the team finish. We all ran in together and were just so happy to be finished.

Dinner that night was entertaining. We were all so tired we were saying all kinds of crazy things. Brenda was really struggling to put a sentence together and we all laughed pretty hard. The burgers were also ENORMOUS and it was quite the sight to watch us try and eat them.

I slept really good Saturday night. The only hitch was my 1:30 wake up for the bathroom and then when I got back to the tent I found out that the guy in the tent next to us snores. REALLY LOUD. Puts my dad's snoring to shame. I had to dig around in my stuff to find some ear plugs so I could actually go back to sleep.
My legs felt better Sunday morning. I got up and got ready and then we packed up camp and headed out.

We made it to church just outside of Zion National Park and then we went and hiked around a bit in the park.

It was a great trip and a fun race and I'd definitely do it again.I had a great team and we made some fun memories. Our inside jokes give me a good laugh at random times throughout the day and I'm grateful for the new friends I made.