Ragnar Relay Las Vegas 2009

During Fall, 2009, my wife has decided she is going to run Ragnar Relay Las Vegas in 2010. By January, she had a full team of 12 runners to join her in this quest to run nearly 200 miles as a team. I offered to drive a van, or anything else to help, just no running.

Summer rolled around, and she has already had to replace the entire team. Twice. Getting frustrated, she told me that I was on the team, as a runner. She was tired of replacing runners.

Knowing that I should probably not attempt the relay without some form of training, I would be in trouble. Utilizing our treadmill, I tried to log some miles on there. The name ‘Dreadmill’ definitely exists for a reason. After maybe 16 miles over a month, I was done. Again, I tried running full on, as long as I could. This is not always a bad strategy, for me though, it isn’t always so great.

Come race weekend, aka Friturday, our team met up, along with a last minute replacement hours before the start. Talk about cutting it close. Being our first relay, not being into tracking as much as I am now, I have no clue what kind of pace I ran. Running through Lake Mead National Recreation Area, with the rolling hills was a bit of a challenge. My second leg was a night time almost 5k. Apparently, I was flying, as my team undershot where they expected me to be, and had to play catch-up in the van.

During my wife’s second leg, the wheels came off. Between puking up dinner & some severe hip/shin pain, she had to call it a relay mid-leg. Had she realized it was only a little more than a mile to the exchange she probably would have pushed through. Injuries get aggravated that way, probably good she didn’t. So, I hopped out and ran the last mile+ of her second leg.

Now, our van was down one runner for the final six legs. Paul, who for a while ran a half a day for fun, said he was up for more miles, as was I. The plan was, I would run my leg, and continue on as far as I could, then pass off to Paul, who would finish Jet’s leg, then continue onto his.

By the end of the event, I had ran 22 miles, in 32 hours. The most I had ever attempted, to that point. While there was an initial dread to partaking in the event, before we finished, I was already bitten by the running bug, I wanted to run them all.