Ragnar

A couple of months ago, one of our friends mentioned they were looking for some runners for their Ragnar team. I had heard of the race before and thought this would be a great way to get back to a workout routine and do something fun and challenging.So I signed up, told my friend Dustin about it, he signed up also and off to start training for this. The race was this past Friday and Saturday and in one word it was awesome!

I mean, who wouldn't do a 200 mile race with 11 other people on your team? Our race was from Cumberland, Md to DC's National Harbor. We went up on Thursday night with part of the team and started with the first wave of runners on Friday morning at 5:30am. I was Runner #2 in Van #1. My 3 legs were #1 - 6.3 miles "very hard", 4.5 miles "moderate" and 2.8 miles "easy". I'm lucky, despite the fact that my legs were challenging for me, they weren't the hardest ones on the course. I knew most of the people on my team but not everyone and it was fun to get to know some new faces, cheering for each of them and telling them how proud we felt every time someone finished their leg. For October we had an heat index of 99 degrees so it was hot and humid. Van #2 did some of the toughest legs with this awful heat and they rocked it! This was a great experience for me because lately it's been tough and accomplishing something positive, hard and doing it well, was needed.

I am proud of myself for running a nice steep 2 miles hill without walking, smashing my toe nail during the 4 mile downhill, running 4.5 miles in pitch black dark night despite being scared of being alone in the dark, pushing myself mentally to finish despite wanting to puke most of my last leg. I'm proud of myself for finishing all my legs faster than the estimated time. I came in 13mns faster on my last one than predicted. I'm proud of my teammates for running so hard, so well and for laughing just as hard at all the fun stuff along the way. We all ran "Like A Boss!"(this funny mullet headed kid at one of the exchanges kept saying that and it stuck with our van the whole rest of the race).

What a fun race despite how sore I feel today. I slept like a baby last night, took another nap this morning and the plan is to lay on the couch pretty much the rest of the day. This was truly an awesome experience.

I can't wait to do another one. There will be another one. Let's find one www.ragnarrelay.com