Ragnar Odds and Ends

For the last week or so, I've been pretty much blogging exclusively about the Ragnar Relay. And if you are about ready to see more posts about other topics, don't worry, I'll be getting to other things soon enough. This relay race has been a much more enjoyable and rewarding experience than I could have imagined, so it's carried over into my writing. I'm kind of an emotional writer, at least when I feel something I can write about it for days, so that's kind of what's going on here.

Anyway, there are some things that didn't make my previous Ragnar posts, as well as some new tidbits.

Inadvertent Guest Blogger

After my post on Wednesday about the fallen Ragnar runner, I was contacted by the blog Running Relays and asked if I'd be willing to share my post over there. I was honored so I agreed. Check out the blog if you have a chance. I have a feeling I will be since I'm kinda hooked on the ideas of relay races. And who knew there were so many relay races out there?

Preparing For The Race

Here are some pictures of my pre-race preparations. They were actually from the day before the race, when I was getting all my gear together.

All the clothes I took with me to the race. I actually only used one of those shirts, the black one, during the race. Ragnar hooked us up with some nice shirts and I ran with our team shirt as well.

Some of the provisions I took. I used two of the Gu packets, and handed two more out, so I came back a lot of the energy gels. I used the Body Glide on my thighs, of all places. I'll have to explain that one. One of the trail mix bags came back full but the other served well as a snack.

I donated the apples. I don't know where they went, and I didn't have any apples. Didn't feel like them. Jorge and Fausto stocked the van well so I didn't need to bring these apples. The Clif bars did well as my usual pre-run meal (along with some water). I used the tape for my nips, and there are some Aleve in there with the band-aids that were used as well. This bag ended up being my bag of dirty clothes.

What it all looks like packed in. Fuel belt and iPod were each indispensible, as always.

Tortoise Green

Danny and Mychael were awesome throughout the whole relay race experience. They first came up with the idea of entering into the race, organized pretty much everything that had to be done before the race and were vital parts of our Ragnar effort.

They also ordered us these awesome shirts.

They are nice quality shirts and I'll use mine again. Not sure if I want to throw it into the rotation right away or save it for special runs or whatever. We'll see.

Decorations

We had to decorate our van, of course. Some vans were all done up, and our own Van One (which was actually an SUV) looked great.

Our effort:

Fausto drew these on either window. They looked great, and identical to the tortoise Mychael drew on all of our hats.

We all drew our names on the back of the van window as well.

Fly Like An Angel


This team that we ended up running along with for several of our legs wore some outfits. We joked with them that they were cheating because they had wings. According to the Ragnar site, they were Goofy Runners - Bradley's Angels, at least that's what their team name was.

This particular runner was running along Alex's first leg, the most grueling leg of 'em all. But the wings didn't seem to faze her during her 8.6-mile run.