News del Mercado: Ragnar!

About Ragnar: Ragnar is a running relay race consisting of 12 members on a team. There were about 170 teams in this race from Muskegon to Traverse City. Basically up the coast of Lake Michigan for 200 miles. Each member ends up running abdout 17-18 miles total. There are two vans per team so you can "be off the clock" for a few hours while the other van has a person running. So you are either running, prepping to run, or recovering from a run, along while cheering your team member on when your van is "on". Each team has a name. We were Don't Hurry, Be Happy, with a turtle as our "mascot". Every team makes up little magnets to slap on other team's vans. That's where our turtle was pictured. There's a lot of running, driving, drinking water, eating, cheering, and conversing. Not much sleeping, though!

Our magnet

Our van. The "hare tally" is how many people we each "killed" or passed while running. That's a thing in Ragnar. This tally pictured here was in the middle of the run, so not our final count. We lost track of that when the rain washed it off!

A better picture of our turtle.

Someone else's van. We saw this "dummy" at every exchange point!

Meet the team:

Our team leader and runner 1, Laura, is in the Canton ward. She teaches Hight Fit in the parking lot of the soccer fields. She is an amazingly fit person, so kind and friendly, and worked so hard to put together our team of 12 and give us the best experience in this race.

Bobbie Lee, runner 2, is a fantastic runner and member of a local non-denominational church. She is very active in her church and is a woman of such strong faith who gives amazing prayers!

I was runner 3. I was one of the oldest ladies on the team, but held some of the fastest average speeds on my runs. I averaged a 7:48 minute pace on my short 4.1 run! Though I thought I would be too tired for this event and was nervous about feeling sick from eating at weird times, I felt pretty good and planned my food well! That's one thing about being older, you have more experience with that kind of thing.

When our run was over, we'd pass along the snap bracelet to the next runner.

Jenni Mae was runner 4. She was a college roommate of Laura's and is living in Missouri. She is a very supportive friend and great conversaltionalist! She asked such thought provoking questions on some of the longer stretches of our drive that we really got to know each other well. Also, great stamina in her runs!

Rachel, runner 5, is in the Canton ward. She came with an injured sciatic nerve. She couldn't even walk in the grocery store a week or so before Ragnar, so she wasn't sure how she'd do. She swapped one of her longer runs out with runner 6, but other than that, she was able to do some slow running, which surprised us all! In fact, I think the only time she walked was up a huge hill on her last leg. She is a fighter! She is also super athletic and played softball at BYU and happened to live in Taylor Hall only one floor below me the exact year I was there!

She was looking like she was going to go super slow, but she really went much faster than we expected!

Teresa was runner 6, except for the first leg when she ran for Rachel. She's also a roommate of Laura's in college, currently from Kansas. She is so fun and friendly, praising everyone for their hard work in the race. She also was recovering from an injury, a long-standing IT band injury from a past marathon, but she did so well!

Laura gave us all these cute compression socks, among other little gifts.

Van 1 was all done by this time!

This was during one of my runs.

We were all in Van 1. This is Van 2.

Before the race, while we were finishing our first legs.

Smiles in the middle of the night!

I didn't get to know them quite as well, since we didn't ride together, but two of them are from my ward, the Plymouth ward. These ladies got the brunt of the race. While Van 1 did have to leave at 5:30 am the first morning and they got to sleep in (5:30 is my normal time anyhow, so no surprise there), they had their first legs in the middle of the day, when it was the hottest, and their first legs weren't very long, so they weren't that tired when they went to rest at the hotel for our evening legs. They started their 2nd legs around 8:30 pm, while we got to go rest at the hotel until 2:30 am. The worst part was that was when it was storming. We could hear the wind and the rain from our hotel, so we couldn't even sleep. When we finally started to fall asleep, the power went out and the microwave started making this crazy alarm sound! When we met them at 3 am to start our 3rd and final legs, they were beat up! And they didn't get to go to a hotel after that. We each only got one stay at the hotel. After that, we had to rest at major exchange points in the vans so we could be where we needed to be for the next exchange.

Things I Learned: Michigan does have some pretty steep hills up near Traverse City. That was the end of the course, so we all had some hills on our last legs, a lot of them were run in the dark, maybe that was a good thing so we didn't have to see them! I also learned that I can survive a few hours of lousy sleep, I didn't think I could! And, I would definitely do it again! It was such a great time with so many amazing women. Not just physically, but spiritually, socially, and mentally too. I felt so inspired by all of them!

The last runner came into the finish line area, then we all ran in with her to receive our medals. It turns out that our team came in 7th place out of 25 teams of all women. So we did pretty well, despite injuries and our "don't hurry" name. Go team!