Ragnar...finally!

Team For The Run Of It

February 26-27, 2010

I blogged my excitement about signing up and participating in something like this way back in the summer. I started training lets say August or September-ish and did pretty well staying consistent and making progress for a while. Then I would get busy or distracted by other things and slack off. Then I would kick it into gear and get back with it, then I would slack off. You get the idea. Well then the holidays rolled around and it just seemed like I could never get back in a good routine. All these months of working towards a goal, I went through all these different stages. Excitement, anticipation, motivation, fear, frustration, doubt, the closer I got the more nervous I was that I wasn't prepared enough, I was feeling a little stress and anxiety to just get it over with!
When I got back from my sisters trip I really tried to be consistent with my running schedule because I only had 2 weeks left. I was able to get a little training in but definitely not as much as I would have liked!!

It was FINALLY time!!! I totally had fun getting some things together for our team "For the Run of it". With the help of my good friend we designed a pretty cool looking shirt that everyone seemed to really like! The shirts came in handy for our race because they were easy to spot! We could usually find our runner pretty easily! I made some funky headbands, decked the Tahoe out, bought an air horn, some pom poms, charged all the camera batteries, everyone brought enough snacks to feed a third world country (banana anyone??)!! It was go time!

Van #1 was Jessica, Amanda, Katie, Shannon, Alyson, and Mary. We were Van #2 with myself, Alisa, Rachel, Misty, Laree, and Stephanie. We all met up in Prescott early Friday morning. Van #1 started us off. We didn't have to run for a while but we hung around for a bit to cheer on our team and just get the hang of things since we were all rookies at this! The weather was absolutely perfect and everyone was pumped! The first 2 legs were pretty mild but Katie's #3 leg was a doozy not only was it a longer one it had some whopper hills!
If I am remembering correctly it was about 3pm when it was our vans turn to take over and we were up around Hillside somewhere. While our runner was out we would leap frog and offer them water and yell obnoxiously out the window to cheer them on. Alisa definitely had the killer leg in this round. I was exhausted just looking at the hills she was running!! What a woman! I was starting to get real nervous, just one more runner and it was my turn!!

Getting all garbed up!

Passing the band From Misty to me, ahhh! I was so anxious and focused I didn't even realize I hadn't turned my Ipod on for like the first mile!!
this is my running face apparently!! We had so much fun cheering each other on and making our runners laugh as we drove past them, it was very motivating and entertaining, especially on the very last leg when they come driving by windows rolled down, blaring Bust a Move and totally rockin out!!

By the time it was my turn it was getting close to sunset so I had to get all garbed up in 5 pounds of equipment it felt like! I was not loving running with that blasted head lamp cutting into my skull. My run wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated. It did get dark about half way through but it wasn't to bad. The worst part was that the entire thing was on a dirt road and all the vehicles are driving past kicking up dust like crazy, it was nasty and I felt so dirty, disgusting when I was done! Our group made pretty good time and finished around 9:30-10 pm. We decided the hotel rooms that one of the girls had booked were just to far of a drive to get there and back in time for our next runs so Misty's in laws graciously agreed to let us shower and crash at their house for a couple hours. We had finished around Wickenberg so it was still a good 30 min drive to their house. By the time we got there and a few of us showered it was late! I think I may have slept 30 min to an hour maybe by the time we got the call that we needed to head out! It's not easy peeling yourself out of bed at 2 in the morning when you just got in it but at least I was clean! It was a mad rush and we were hauling to try and make it to the exchange in time. when we were turning off of Lake Pleasant Pkwy. on to Carefree Highway there were highway patrol and roadblocks set up. We had to pull over and learned from the officer that there was no way to get through to our exchange because a runner had been hit by a car. It was extremely upsetting and unsettling news. After waiting there a while we got word that ALL runners no matter where they were in the race were being routed to exchange 24. So basically we just skipped all 6 of our next runs. The first van was done and headed (the long way) back to the hotel to rest, shower and sleep. Our group headed to the exchange to find out what the new plan was. I can't even imagine what a logistical nightmare that was for them. The school parking lot they had us all meet in was a sea of white 15 passenger vans and tired. dirty runners! The short of it is that they gave everyone the option of calling it quits then or resigning up and starting from that point. We definitely wanted to finish but obviously had to do some major readjusting. We all were now running different legs then what we had planned on.Our new start time wasn't until 7:30 am. So basically we burned over 4 hours not sleeping, not running and really tired! We went to Einsteins got some breakfast and our luckily our second wind!

(I played chauffeur for pretty much the entire weekend, poor girls and Alisa was my copilot!!)

We finished the next 6 legs without incident thank goodness. The last 6 we split up among us and had van 1 meet up with us so Katie could run 1 of them.
The coarse of this race took us from Prescott, down through Wickenberg, up the Carefree Highway into Scottsdale, then Fountain Hills, Mesa and eventually at 4:30 pm finishing at Tempe Market Place. Personally I was so exhausted at that point I cannot even imagine if that horrible, tragic accident hadn't happened we would have still been running till probably 8 or 9pm? Despite the accident and rerouting business and a few other minor details our van had an absolute blast together and cannot wait to do it again!! We laughed our heads off, talked, cheered, danced, rocked out, ran, ran some more, laughed a whole lot more and became really good friends and made some unforgettable memories! I admire these women and their amazing skills and am inspired to work even harder for next time! Seriously one of the funnest (in a very deranged and twisted way)!

Laree!! Love this girl!
Oh the stories, I mean nightmares we could tell about the Ragnar porta potties!!!
I'm not sure why Misty is smiling I was usually a little nauseous coming out of there!!!
Why do I stand next to the tall skinny one???

FINISHED!!!