So waaayyy back last year, I had some friends that thought it would be a fantastic idea to put a team together to run a ginormous 191-mile race in June. Doesn’t that sound like fun?? (hmmm…) I agreed to be an alternate, you know, in the remote chance that some life-ish thing came up for one of the runners. And guess what?? In the year that happened in between the time that the race was signed up for and the time that the race would actually occur, one of the team members discovered the happy news that she was in the family way and then went on to have the baby before the race even started! Look how excited I am to be the alternate!?
Sleeping bag-check; pillow-check; strawberry Greek yogurt, trail mix, and protein bars-check; extra plump and cushy blue pad to sleep on-questionable …
Just look at the fire exhibited by team 781!! I know exactly what you’re thinking—they look like they’d be suuuper fast…
As a special Wasatch Back bonus, a grown man in a diaper over his clothing would spray paint a Ragnar symbol on the body area of your choosing-for free!! (If you were wondering, spray paint doesn’t exactly “wash off easily” as soon as the running is done and you go back to regular places like work, or church…)
I am smiling because it was so beautiful outside and I am so thankful that running up to Snow Basin Ski Resort was not one of my legs! Now running downhill 7 miles through the picturesque hamlet of Henefer, Utah, at 1:30 in the morning—that was my leg, and my favorite leg, for real! And encountering what I thought at first to be a large rock, but upon closer view with help from my headlamp, turned out to be a goat, was priceless! He didn’t bother me, I didn’t bother him…
The mid-June view from the window on Day 2-brrr…
I have never been so thrilled to run and more importantly, to stop running!! 17 miles over the course of a day and a half is a lot of running for me. But then when you get the results that say that your rag-tag team of all-stars placed 18th out of 760 teams in the open co-ed division, wow!! What can I say? I mean, I really thought we did good, like the kind of good where everyone tried really hard, we all cheered each other on, no one completely lost it, and there was just a little bit of throwing up-good. But the computer said we did crazy good --like amazing superstar turbo athletic speed good!! Could it really be true? All of the members of our team didn’t even know each other before we started and yet we were still able to work together so seamlessly—incredible!! Isn’t everything on the internet true??
Alas, there is no possible way that our team finished in 26 hours and 7 minutes, even though the computer said we did. Somehow, there was a glitch, a super special computer glitch that makes our team look supreme, especially amazing for a team that was basically trying to finish somewhere above 759th place—not too shabby!
The down side-I don’t think that we can pull off a repeat 18th place speed performance when we do it again next June, but I do think we can top 759th…
**And little life tip, make sure to wear a headlamp when making a quick visit to the honey bucket at midnight…
