Ragnar Del Sol 2010

I just finished running in a 202 mile relay race from Prescott to Tempe. It sounds like torture, but it was so fun! I ran three legs of the relay. My team, Just For the Run of It, started at 10am in Prescott on Friday morning and finished at 4:15 on Saturday afternoon in Tempe. Our team of 12 was made up of all women and we cycled through everyone three times to reach our destination. At least that was the plan at the beginning of the race. I was the 4th runner in the cycle.


My first leg was 5 miles and it was a really fun stretch of road just outside of Prescott Valley. The weather was nice and cool, but not snowy and cold like we thought it might be. I got a little sunburned on my face. I was the most nervous about this leg because it had some hills in it. I don't get a lot of practice with hills in my very flat city. I exceeded my expectations on this run and it was so fun! I forgot to start my watch but I think I did it in less than an hour.
My next run was also 5 miles and I started sometime in the middle of the night, maybe 1am? I started on highway 89 and ran in to Wickenburg. It was a dark and lonely run, hardly any other runners near me at that time. I just cranked up my music and had a great run! Thanks to Jen Tanner for the awesome running mix! It helped me so much. I felt really good after this run too. I was happy to have two legs done and it seemed to go by so fast. My time on this leg was 53 minutes.

We had two vans with 6 runners in each. The idea is that Van 1 can rest while Van 2 cycles through their runners and then we meet at the exchanges and Van 2 rests and Van 1 runs. I was in Van 1 and as our second legs were ending, we were trying to contact Van 2 to let them know what time they should meet us. Our runs started about 10pm so they were trying to catch some sleep. We learned there had been an accident on a stretch of road near Lake Pleasant and the road was closed off. Our van 2 was on the other side of it and couldn't get back to us. The race organizers were efficient in taking care of this glitch. I was very impressed. We were at Exchange 18 and they told everyone to skip ahead to Exchange 24. We had a hotel reservation to stop and take showers and try to sleep for a few hours so Van 2 headed to 24 and Van 1 went to the hotel. The start times in the beginning had been staggered to spread out the 350 teams participating so now everyone was bunched up at Exchange 24. They had to stagger us again so everyone got a start time and our van 2 had to wait until 7:30 am to start again. We finished at Exchange 18 about 3:30am and by the time everything was straightened out our van had to sit and wait for 2 hours before their start time. The problem was that they were now running the legs that Van 1 was supposed to run. They are all different distances so everyone had trained for a specific distance between 13 and 22 miles. We did a little rearranging and it worked out great for everyone on our team.

My last leg was 3.5 miles and my muscles were so sore by this time. I had slept 4 hours at the hotel, thanks to our extended break, which was more than most people on my team. I was hoping to finish this leg in 40 minutes. It was a hard run for me! My legs were screaming the whole time. But I ran it out and finished in 44 minutes. It felt good to be done!

It was an unexplainable experience. I loved the women that I was running with, even though I had just met most of them 24 hours before. I feel so proud of my accomplishment right now. I ran 13.5 miles and had so much fun doing it!