Devon really wanted to put together a team of couples from our neighborhood to run the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay. Its a relay race made up of 12 people riding in two different vans (unless you're crazy and only use 6 runners). The total race is approximately 200 miles and each runner runs a total of 12-21 miles, broken up over 3 different legs. It starts in Logan, Utah, and ends in Park City, Utah, and it travels over mountains and all through the back country. It is beautiful! It rotates through the runners 1-12, then repeats 3 times. Each of the legs are designated by the race, and the exchanges happen at their set places along the route. It takes anywhere from around 19 to 40 hours, depending on how fast your team is. Our team finished it in 31:54:04, which placed us 322 out of 1092 teams. It is one of those crazy-fun things... running through the night... being in a car with 5 other sweaty people... running in the heat of the day after you've already ran quite a bit of miles and then sat in a car and got stiff... but strangely enough it is such a fun experience. When you are done you feel that high of knowing you accomplished something seriously hard, and its awesome!
Both Devon and I have run it once before, but not the same year. We both took on harder legs that we did last time, and I think we did a great job! My goal was to not walk at all. For those who haven't done Ragnar - that might sound a little strange (it is a race after all!), but in all honesty I think a ton of people end up walking a bit here and there. For me, that isn't what I want to do. I was a little unsure if I could do it, especially since my last leg was 5.5 miles most of it being slightly to moderately uphill, with a nice steep hill from mile 4.5-5. I really don't know where it came from, but I did it and I was so happy I did it!
Devon took on one of the seriously crazy-hard legs where he had to run an incline of 500 ft per mile for the last 3 miles of his last run. He literally was running up the mountain that divides Heber from Park City, then the next runner finished the last bit, and the next runner ran down the other side. Crazy! It was so fun to see!! This is Devon at the very top of that mountain. I didn't angle my camera for the right view to see how high up we are, but you can see how beautiful it was.
Here is our team! The team name we chose was "I Just Swore In My Head A Little." Part of the fun of Ragnar is the team names and decorating the vans. Its fun to see what others come up with as you go along. You literally see cars with life-size barbies attached to the roofs, and mammoth tusks attached to the front of Suburbans. The atmostphere is just a lot of fun!
My brother Steve and his wife Nancy ran on another team. It just happened that our teams paralleled each other the entire way, so we got to cheer each other along the way. We did end up finishing about 20 minutes before them, but our team actually started 30 minutes ahead of them as well, and officially they beat us by 12 minutes. We had a minor mess up at one exchange where Van 1 didn't meet us at the right exchange site. I think it was the lack of sleep, but they drove to where their first runner was supposed to end instead of where the runner was supposed to start. By the time they got to us, roughly 12 minutes or so had gone by, so I would say it was a tie between our team and my brother's! I really loved seeing them along the way.
