Many months ago Jen, Parker and myself decided to accept an invitation to run the Ragnar relay race. For those who have never heard of it, it's a 12-person relay race that's about 186 miles in total. You have two vans of 6 people each so when the other van is running, you have a little bit of time for food, sleep, etc. Depending on the speed of your team, it generally takes around 30 hours to complete.
Our Ragnar started in San Francisco and went through Napa, ending in Calistoga. Jen will post about van 2's adventures, but this post is about the adventures of van 1 (where Parker and I were). First, we met at Jeremy Jacobs' house at about 5:00 am. Here is Parker and I as we're about to drive to San Francisco.
Here are Cami and Teri.
And, here are Jeremy and his sister Tamra.
Now, that you've been introduced to the members of the van, I'll share some of the adventure. Once we made it to San Francisco, we had a little trouble finding the starting line (this will be a common theme). Fortunately, a car behind us flashed their lights to remind us we were driving down the left side of one of the few streets in San Francisco that is NOT a one-way street. Here we are getting ready to check in and begin the race.
Our team was called The Pretenders (since none of us are true runners). Since our shirts are loosely designed based on the Superman shirt, we each did our best superman pose. Here's mine:
Here I am at the starting line waiting for the race to begin. Fortunately for you, we didn't get a picture of the guy wearing only a Speedo. Turns out he was actually really fast, but I think he could have saved us the visual.
My first leg took me along the pier of San Francisco and then onto the Golden Gate bridge. Right before the bridge were a bunch of stairs (didn't count them all but there were lots of them!) that were very steep. Since there was construction on the bridge, we went about 2/3 of the way across the bridge, turned around and came back. Then, theoretically, your team would be waiting for you and you would get in the van and drive across the bridge before beginning leg two. I say theoretically because when I finished, our van was nowhere to be seen! After several minutes, they finally pulled up and apparently the directions told them to turn left when they were supposed to turn right. Anyhow, I finished my 4 miles in about 29 minutes which was a little faster than I had expected.
Jeremy ran the second leg and then it was Parker's turn. Here he is in his superman pose.
And here he is waiting to start his first leg.
Parker was amazingly fast on this leg. He ran his 3 miles in a pace of about 6:11 per mile and passed 19 people during his leg. Lots of people came up to him afterwards (on this leg and his others) and asked how old he was and then congratulated him for blowing past them.
Teri Rossi ran the fourth leg, which was supposed to be about 7 miles. Unfortunately, she made a wrong turn and ended up running almost 2 additional miles before she realized it. A race official took her back to where she made the wrong turn and then she finished from there. We were just really glad she wasn't hurt because we had received a text saying our runner was headed to the exchange point with a race official.
Cami and then Tamra finished legs five and six and then we went to Wendy's for lunch (we were starving!). After eating, we realized we still had a few hours before van 2 would be done and since it was the middle of the afternoon, we couldn't sleep. So, we decided to find a bowling alley in Petaluma. Here are a few pictures of our bowling experience:
I actually had 3 strikes in a row at one point and finished with a 164 (after having only 55 through 5 frames). It was fun and didn't take too much energy. If you can't tell, we were the only ones bowling in the whole place!
We also came up with nicknames for each of our runners. Here are the nicknames on the bowling alley screen as well as the van (Parker was Young Gun for obvious reasons and I was Unbreakable. I'm not totally sure how I got that one since they came up with it while I was running leg one -- maybe because I'm old?):
In case you're wondering, we kept track of "kills" while we ran which are the # of people you pass as you're running. As you can see above, by the end of the race our van had 120 kills. Parker had 42 by himself and I had 34.
Our second legs were in the afternoon and early evening. Mine was really hot and had a few hills so I was pretty worn out after finishing that one (about an 8 minute per mile pace). Parker was tired too although he still ran about a 7 minute per mile pace for his 5 miles. After our van finished their legs, we headed to a high school that was open for food, showers, and sleeping. We had a pasta dinner, which was good and decided to skip the showers since it was basically a bag of cold water that you could use. Sleeping didn't work out real well either since we were in a gym without hundreds of other people (several of whom were snoring including the guy two people over from me). Parker and a few others got maybe an hour of sleep before we got a text from van 2 saying they would be finished sooner than they had expected.
We got up and got in the van and headed to the exchange point. Unfortunately, it was further away than we thought so we were late getting there (the big learnings if we ever do this again are mostly around not getting lost in the van or on the course!).
Once we got there, I jumped out of the van and ran to the exchange point. Of course, I forgot to bring my running watch or my iPod so I ran without knowing my pace and without any music. It was about 2:45 am and was really dark and fairly chilly -- which ended up being perfect conditions for me. I don't know my exact pace but am pretty sure it was my fastest of the race.
Parker nearly got lost on his final leg since one of the signs wasn't well marked. Fortunately, we had driven the course a little ways and found where they were supposed to go so we got him (and several other runners) back on course.
Our van finished their legs about 6:30 am and then handed it off to van 2. We went to Denny's for a celebratory breakfast and then headed to the finish line.
Here are a few photos from the finish line. Don't we look excited to be done?! You can't even tell that we are in pain, can you?
Our family (Parker, Jen, Drew, Tina, Kevin, Courtenay, and myself then joined together to have lunch at Red Hen Cantina. Then, we just had to stay awake long enough to get back home (which was a lot harder than it sounds!).
All in all, we had a great time. Here are a couple final shots (the back of our T-shirts) and our van. If we can get Jen healthy again (see her post for more details), we may even run a Ragnar somewhere else next year! But we won't jump to any decisions anytime soon.
