Ragnar Relay Las Vegas 2010

A  year ago some of my friends ran the Las Vegas Ragnar and it sounded a little interesting to me but I didn't put much thought into really doing it.  Then at the beginning of the summer a bunch of friends had signed up to do it this year, but I really didn't feel like doing it so never really pursued trying to get on a team.  At the end of August my friend Melanie mentioned that there was an opening on her team and asked if I was interested so I decided to do it but then the spot got filled but she told me about another team with an opening and the next thing I knew I had paid my money, been assigned my legs and realized I only had 8 weeks to train and be ready.  I hadn't run since the beginning of May so I was really  nervous about being out of shape.  The first morning I went out running, the group was doing 8 miles, I thought I would just go as far as I could and then turn back.  Well it was still really dark out and I didn't want to run by myself and the next thing I knew I had run out 4 miles which meant I had to run back 4 miles to get to my car.  As soon as I got home I knew I had pushed myself way too hard, I couldn't walk for several days after.  The rest of the training went well until October hit and because of Paul's rotation schedule I couldn't run in the morning anymore and finding time and people to run with became really stressfull.  Luckily my friend Jenny saved me and offered to run with me and she pretty much was able to go whenever I needed her to. She was the best and pushed my to run faster and gave me a lot of confiedence for the upcoming ragnar.
 

Me, Hailey, Jennifer, Cindi, Tina and Tammy

The morning fo the race I was really nervous.  I only knew two girls on the team and neither of them was in my van.  Luckily the girls in my van were awesome and we got along really well.  We were suppose to be to the starting line at 8:30 and then our start time was 9:30.  Well we were a little late and didn't arrive until 9:10 so we were reassigned a start time of 9:45.  I was runner 6 in my van which means I was the last runner so I spent all morning and afternoon driving around in the van, cheering on my team mates and being extremely anxious! Our team name was "it takes a lot to look this good"  and we all had hot pink tank tops with our team name and runner number on the back, black and white tutu's, and white knee socks with skulls on them.  It was fun to have matching outfits and it was really easy to pick our team out of a crowd.  This ragnar was 195 miles that started at Valley of Fire State Park and ended at Red Rock Casino.  There were twelve girls on our team and we each ran 3 different legs.  It took us 32 hours and 48 minutes to finish the entire race!

 Waiting at the starting line for our first runner to start.

 Tammy and Jennifer decorating our van, they added streamers and ribbon and suprisingly it stayed on through the entire journey.

 Right before I ran my first leg.  It was 8.8 miles with a ton of hills, it was a beautiful run but very difficult.  It was definitely my hardest run and I'm so glad I got it over first. 

At the exchange point, Tammy was handing off the slap bracelet to me.  The bracelet got really annoying because it was kind of tight and super sweaty, and gross to hand off the sweaty thing to the next runner.

This picture was taking at about mile 5, I had run most of the big hills already and I think this was my final big hill. 

 At the end of my run, it was always fun to finish my runs because this is when we got to meet up with van 2. 

 I was so hot after this run and my face was beat red for about 45 minutes.  We got very lucky to have gorgeous weather.  It was mostly overcast the entire weekend with highs only in the 70's, which makes for great running weather.

Jennifer, Tina, Hailey, Tammy, Cindi and Me

After our van finished our first legs we headed back to the hotel to drop off our stuff and then ran to subway to get some dinner and then we had to be back at our next exchange point to meet van 2 and be ready to start running  our second legs.

 Thanks to Tammy and her husband we had an awesome hotel suite at the Trump hotel to go back to during our breaks.  And it was seriously so nice, we were  on the 63rd floor with a view overlooking the strip, it had two bedrooms, three bathrooms and a kitchen.

 The girls in my van waiting at Lake Las Vegas.  During the night time hours if we were out of our vans we had to be wearing reflective vests.

 I got super tired around 10 PM, we were just hanging out in the van while Cindy was running and I wanted nothing more then to be at home in my bed.  My turn to run finally came at about 12:40 AM it was 3.2 miles and ended at the Henderson Pavillion.  I had run my route before, it was dark and I didn't want to get passed so I ran as fast as I could and ended up doing the run in 20 minutes (which is 6.25 minute miles and I normally run 9-10 minute miles) so I was pretty impressed with myself.  The crappy part was when I ran into the exchange point neither van 1 or 2 were there. My van was taking one of our pacers home and Van 2 got lost and was about 20 minutes late.  After my run we headed back to the hotel to get some rest.  It was about 2 AM when we got to the hotel room and by the time I showered it was almost 3 AM.  I was the only one whose cell phone hadn't died so I was the one getting texts from the other van.  I would almost drift off to sleep and then get a text  and then we had to be up at 5 AM to head to our next exchange point.  So I got maybe 1 hour of sleep total, I was exhausted!

 The "Horn", I always knew my van was coming when I could hear the horn blaring. 

 This was my final leg, 6.1 miles with a steady incline the entire way.  I was really worried about this run because of the incline and it being my final run.  The incline ended up not being that bad and physically it wasn't too bad but mentally it was really tough.  It was a long dirt road with nothing pretty to look at.  All I could see was the long straight road in front of me, pretty boring.  I was so excited to be done, now our van could just relax and wait for van 2 to finish.

 We saw a couple of these along our run on the dirt road. Yikes! After our final run we went back to the hotel to shower, pack up our stuff, get some lunch at CPK and then we headed out to Red Rock Casino. 

 I was met by my family!  Man I was excited to see them, I really missed them tons but was lucky to have my husband, mom, and two sisters at home taking care of them so I had nothing to worry about.  Thanks family for all your help, and thanks Erin and Paul for being our volunteers at the race!

 Our entire team at the finish line!

 We also got our picture with this other team because we pretty much ran the entire race with them and then finished at the same time, but for the life of me I can't remember their team name.

Me and Melissa with our medals.  Yay we finished!

I'm so glad I did it, so glad it's over and can't wait to do it again!