SoCal Ragnar 2012

I ran the Southern California (SoCal) Ragnar Relay with some friends and then friends and family of those friends. My brother Nate ended up running the race with us and it was a lot of fun doing this with him.

"What is Ragnar?" you may ask. Ragnar is a relay race, usually covering about 200 miles, that you run with a team of 6-12 people. Now when you first hear that description you may think, "Ok, so crazy people do that" but it's actually a lot of fun and extremely addicting. The whole experience involves people cheering for you, hilarious team name/outfits/decorations, a medal, cheering for people when the come out of the port-a-potties, getting into shape (but even if you are not a serious runner you can run Ragnar), meeting new people, inside jokes, beautiful and new scenery and well... just having fun. This particular Ragnar started at Huntington Beach and Ended at Coronado Island.
Ragnar Website

The day before the race some people went to Disneyland and the rest went to the beach. Since I was the one with the first available car I went to the beach and then picked people up as they arrived through out the day.

Huntington Beach

What a fun and memorable trip. I rented my first car ever for this trip: a mini van... Oh Yeah! Because I rented the van I had drive the entire race (except when I was running) and I soon became known as the "Team Mom" and I was continuously called that or something to that type of reference throughout the race.

I was the team leader for this race and I had a lot of fun adding little details like getting team t-shirts and making packets full of fake tattoos, window markers, glow sticks, and mixed CDs for each van on our team, etc.

Kills = Passing another runner while running a leg

Our team name was "Hell to the Yeah!" and so every time we saw team members or one of our runners were at an exchange point we would yell "Hell to the Yeah!" or just "Hell Yeah Ragnar!" It kind of caught on and so when other teams would recognize us they would cheer for us as well.

We had quite a few dancing parties around our van through out the race as we waited for our runners... one party ended up on the roof of the van! When the guys first started to climb up onto the roof of the van I was expecting my worried wart personality to kick in but it didn't, CARPE DIEM instead, I loved that It happened. Afterwards we had to pop the roof back out... oops.

The race took us through some really neat towns and cities. We even ran through one at midnight that reminded me of Park City and all the people at the restaurants and bars were all cheering for us. My runs took me through Anaheim, Escondido and Del Mar. On my last run I had tons of super steep hills up and down over and over again and my foot started to hurt to the point that for my last two miles I just had to walk. There was another guy walking in front of me so I felt like I had some company but at about 200 yards or so from the exchange place he started to run and I was like, "Well if he's going to run then I'm going to run." So I started to run and it didn't hurt so I started to faster; then I was like, "I'm going to pass this guy." Well as I started to pass the guy he sped up, so I sped up and eventually we were full on sprinting. I loved it, I haven't run like that in years and it felt great! Once I passed the slap bracelet (the baton for the race) on to our next runner I realized the pain was back in my foot and it was so extreme (it felt like a broken bone for sure). When I got home from the trip I had to go to the doctor because my foot was still hurting. Turns out I tore ligaments in my foot because I had plantar fasciitis. Cured with physical therapy.

I was in van 1 and when we were finished running all of our legs and waiting for van 2, to finish so that we could all cross the finish line together, we all went to a park along the shore on Coronado Island and slept for a few hours. We probably seemed like we were loitering but it was the best nap ever taken and we didn't care.

You can't tell but I'm asleep in the red sleeping bag

After the race we all went back to the hotel to play in the pool and hot tub (it was probably gross that we had all been running for the past 36 hours and went straight to the pool). After we all cleaned up we went to Old Town (Near San Diego) for dinner and had some of the best mexican food I have ever had a nobody on the team seams to remember the name of the place.

The next day we went to Church and then took the team to the airport. Nate and I and two other runners had decided to stay an extra day so after dropping off the airport people we headed over to explore Balboa Park. There was a giant festival going on and no parking so after a half hour of trying to find parking we decided to head back to Huntington. (We'll have to go back for Balboa Park)

Our Ragnar Tattoos at Church

On our way back to Huntington we stopped at Laguna Beach and got some gelato to eat while we sat and relaxed on the beach. While we were hanging out on the beach we all saw a whale! All the girls got really excited and we started shouting "WHALE!" Nate was super embarrassed and was trying to hush us up but then other people started shouting too and then he joined in with the excitement. We named the whale Sassafrass.

Sassafrass

We eventually made it back to our hotel, got some pizza and then hung out in the hot tub until it was time for bed. The next day we all flew home; back to our every day lives where showering daily is a must and cheering for random people while driving past them is not normal.