Napa Valley Ragnar 2012
(Warning: This is a LONG post. Mostly for me because I'm not about to write this all by hand down in a journal (typing is so much faster!), but I want to remember everything about it. Feel free to skim and skip down to the pictures if you don't want to read about every.single.detail.)
Oh Ragnar.
I'm not even quite sure how to start talking about this race. There is just so much to say and I know that no matter how I try to sum it all up I won't do it any justice. The two and half days I spent doing Ragnar with my team The Ragdolls was the most fun I have had in years and if I could redo the whole weekend again I would in a heartbeat. Since the race has ended I have received multiple messages from my fellow Ragdolls saying they are having Ragnar withdrawals and that they are missing our team. It was a weekend full of running, but more so full of laughing and lots of inside jokes. I never want to forget this experience...it was really that good!
It all started one day a few months ago when I saw a post on Facebook from Megan Fear saying she wanted to put together a Ragnar team and to message her if you were interested. I pretty much immediately messaged her and said I wanted to be part of it as long as she didn't care that I wasn't still living in the Roseville/Lincoln area. Megan was super excited to have me be on the team so I called Heidi and talked her into doing it too. The whole experience would have been totally different without Heidi...I am so glad we were in this crazy thing together!
I spent almost the whole summer running and getting ready for this race. Then, on Thursday, September 13th, Tim drove me to San Francisco to drop me off at a hotel where our team was meeting up to spend the night before the race began early the next morning. Tim was so supportive of me during all the training and the actual race and I couldn't have done it without him. (He didn't get home from San Francisco until close to 11pm that night, had to put all the kids to bed and then get up the next morning and do the whole school routine. He is the best!) At the hotel we decorated our vans, finished bedazzling our team shirts and exchanged gifts. Each person brought a small gift for everyone else so we each ended up with a bag of 12 little gifts to use during weekend. It was fun, but we didn't go to bed until past 11pm and then I was so anxious about the next day that I didn't go to sleep until past midnight.
Since I was in Van 1 I had to wake up at 4:30 am so that we could make it to the start line downtown, pick up all our paperwork, go through the safety briefing and have Heidi (runner #1) ready to start running by 6:30. I wasn't even tired because of all the excitement, but when we got to the start line it was FREEZING cold!! We started right by the Golden Gate and I think being right next to the water that early in the morning was what made it so cold.
Here are the girls from Van 1 at the start line: Catherine, Courtney, Noush, Me, Heidi and Laura. Even though there are 12 people on your team it really felt more like we were a team of 6 because we were only with the people from our van almost the whole time. Lucky for me I couldn't have been placed with better people!
Heidi was our first runner. Her run ended up being pretty hard because she had to run in the sand along the beach, up a big flight of stairs and then over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was all foggy with the wind coming off that freezing cold water. She's a rockstar though and got us off to a great start!
I was the fifth runner for our team so by the time it was my turn to do my first leg the weather was perfect. I had thought that my first leg would be my easiest because it was only 3.5 miles, but it ended up being by far my hardest. It was straight uphill the entire first mile and even had stairs and trail running. Oh, and I got lost for about a half mile (of course...I would have been more surprised if I never got lost during the whole race) !!
Here I am ready to start my first leg!
Here comes Courtney up the hill to hand off the baton (slap bracelet) to me.
Off I go. I thought that I would just have to go up this hill and then it would be flat, but no. It just kept going up and up and up.
I actually stopped when I got to the top of the mountain I was running up to take this picture with my phone. The view was gorgeous and I couldn't believe I had run up that high.
While I was running the girls had fun taking pictures with my camera ; ) There were SO many different guy teams running in just speedos. Maybe it's more aerodynamic? ; )
Coming in from my first leg! So glad that even though my other legs were longer they were no where as rough as this one was.
The rest of the day was a little relaxing. Laura was the last runner from our van so after she was done we had a few hours to drive to the next place our van would start running and relax. We didn't really see the other half of our team very often (because when they were "on" we were "off") but we met up with them at the major exchanges. Here is Laura telling them all about when she got hit by a car while she was running and then she got lost and another team picked her up and drove her back to the course because she was so far off!
During our break we tried to eat, but I just never felt that hungry. I pretty much had to force myself to eat. I had that sick feeling in my stomach that comes from not getting any sleep and being on a road trip. We also were able to sleep in our van for about 45 minutes. Then it was time to start running again.
Heidi coming in from her 2nd leg. Heidi is a fast runner. I was so impressed with her!
Noush, everyone's favorite little Polly Pocket running down the road in her tutu.
Catherine, Noush, me and Laura hanging out at an exchange...waiting. It was lots of hurry, hurry, hurry and drive and then wait.
Finally it was night time again. We pulled into a church and waited for Courtney to come tag me so I could start by big 9.5 mile run. She's so happy to be done she's glowing.Hahaaa
I was so nervous about this run! Not only was it LONG, but it was at night along some highway in the woods and if you know me at all you know that me being out alone in the woods at night is pretty much my worse nightmare. There were other people running, but usually you are pretty spread out so I was nervous and wishing I had some mace. Haha. Luckily in a wonderful, wonderful chance of luck around mile 3 a girl ran up behind me and asked if we could run together. Yes! My headlamp was also dying so it was nice to run with her. This ended up being my very favorite run of the race. It was cool, but not cold and since there were no lights at all (except for passing cars every now and then) you could see every single star in the sky. It was really unbelievable. It looked like I was running right into the Big Dipper. I seriously just kept pinching myself and feeling so incredibly lucky to be able to run in such beauty. When I finished the first thing I said to my team was "The stars! The stars!" They were all cracking up and from then on I was the crazy zen person into the stars. Haha. : )
A few of the girls were able to sleep in the van after that, but I had too much adrenaline from just finihsing that big run. Luckily a few hours later our van was "off" so we were able to head to a hotel for 5 minute showers and a 2 1/2 nap. I swear I closed my eyes and the next second my alarm was going off.
The next day was more running, but by this point we were all pretty slaphappy from hardly any sleep. We found these little seeds that looked like pig snouts.
Noush and her roller ; )
I took this picture of Catherine at her checkpoint ready to start running as soon as Noush passed her the bracelet. We kept waiting and waiting...and then her phone started ringing...it was Noush...she was done and we were at the WRONG checkpoint! Hahaha
She was happy when we finally found her ; )
Never a dull moment.
Here I am finishing my final leg. During Ragnar I ran 19 miles total. It was the best feeling to know I did it!
When our van was done we celebrated by going to In-n-Out. Hamburgers never tasted so good...especially since during the whole race we never really felt like eating anything besides bananas or bagels.
Then we headed to the finish line to wait for the rest of our team. We had a couple of hours to kill to just lay on the grass and relax. I took this picture because we were seriously all limping to trying to just leave the parking lot. One of the hardest parts of running a relay like this is that you have to sit in a car right after you are done running and you get really sore.
We parked next to this van. I had heard about a two-man ultra team, but didn't believe it until I actually saw it. Crazy!! They each ran around 100 miles.
It was so fun hanging out in the shade with the girls. We were all seriously delirious and every single little thing was hilarious.
Catherine and her hand gestures....everything with her is SO inspirational ; )
We took a few pictures of some of the crazy costumes people were wearing. That team on the bottom left was called "Barely Running" and they were all wearing nude colored running clothes with leaves pinned over there *ahem* parts. Some of the clothes were just a little too see through though!
One of the many benefits to being in Van 1 (besides that we were all freaking awesome! haha) was that we were done first! We planned on crossing the finish line as a team though and running in with our last runner. Right before the last runner, Karen, came in we went and changed and for the first time put on a little makeup and brushed our hair so we could be cute for the finish line photos. Gotta look good for the photos! ; )
Heidi and I. Love this girl to the moon.
Here is our team at the finish line. We did it!! (We are all so excited and poor Karen - second from left - had just finished a long run and was still trying to recover)
Courtney doing her Honey Boo Boo pose
The three Faherty sisters
My favorite team picture. As a team we ran nonstop from San Francisco to the Napa Valley, almost 200 miles!! Between us there are 29 kids! We couldn't have done this without our husbands all at home with the kids cheering us on and supporting us all the way. We are some lucky ladies!
So fun!! Who is in for next year? : )
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