Go, you chicken fat, go away!

RAGNAR!!!  This is what I live for.  The one race I look forward to all year.  You see, racing hurts.  Ragnar hurts.  It hurts bad.  But the difference is, you have 11 friends rooting you on the whole time.  And that helps.  This is the race that got me back into running.  It's the race that changed my unhealthy lifestyle.  I owe my life to Ragnar.  (Cheesy enough?)

One week before the race I get a phone call from the wife of our fastest team member.  She tells me that his back is bothering him, and he hasn't been able to run for two weeks.  That got me worried.  The next day, he called and said he's still going to try and make it, and he wants to run 5:45 mi/min.  That relieved my worries.  Then Tuesday he calls and says it's a no-go.  Dang!  Who can I find now?  I start making phone calls, asking people on the blog, asking members of Athlinks.  Finally I asked a guy that ran with me last year.  He hadn't even been training, but he said he'd do it.  So awesome.

The day before the race I get another phone call.  No!  Jared and Michelle Cox from the other van, the ones that started this madness two years ago, said that they couldn't do it.  Michelle has a severely handicapped sister.  They were told she didn't have much time to live.  Sure enough, she passed away early the next morning.  (For more on the story, see tomorrow's entry.)  So now the whole team was scrambling to find two more runners.  15 hours to go!!  Is it possible?  Of course.  This is Ragnar, baby!  The spirit of Ragnar won't let us down.  Janna from the other van got a friend to run for their van.  He had to skip out on his classes.  Then Bethany from our van got her brother to join up.  The only problem was that he had to work, so he couldn't run his first leg.  We called and got permission for the Animal James W to run that leg.  Now we were set.  Van #2 consisted of myself, Bethany, her brother Christian, Glen from last year's race, and two fellow FRB-er's, Camille, and James W.

We drive up to the First Major Exchange point, and who do I spot?  This red-hot pink chick that is none other than the birthday girl herself, Kelli.  Also in her van from the FRB was her husband Scott (Kelli says he has a blog, but I've yet to see it),  the infamous Walter, and Walter's wife, Misty.  It was great seeing them in person.

We decorated our van and got ready to run.  Our other van managed to get ahead of our predicted pace by about 20 minutes.  (They had all the downhill.)  James was going to run this first leg as a warm-up leg, but adrenaline got the better of him.  He smoked it and put us way ahead of pace.  Everybody else was running right on.

Leg 11

Finally it was my turn.  I started about 10 minutes after the 5:30pm night time start, so I had to wear the reflective vest, headlamp, and tail light.  I didn't really need to turn them on because it was still visible out most of the time.  I tried to finish in time to give James a little bit of daylight, but there wasn't much left when I got there.  My goal was to average 8:15's.  I knew it would be hard because the last three miles were uphill.  I hoped I could make up the time in the first 5 miles.  I started out running the first two miles under an 8 min. pace.  About half a mile into it I got passed by 4 guys all at once.  I thought, "This is ridiculous.  I'm running a 7:30 avg. and  I'm getting passed.  Well, all these guys are going to burn out at mile 5, and I'll catch them."  That never happened.  For the first two miles I was running about 70 feet behind this lady.  I finally pulled up alongside of her, and we chatted for a while.  She was a Mamatukee, a team of over 30 year old mothers from Ahwatukee.  We ran together for about 2 miles and then she left me in the dust.  Literally, because the entire leg was on a dirt road.  The best part was the stream that we had to cross.  I had been forewarned that it was there and told my team to be ready with trash bags for me to step into, but I beat them to it.  So I had to take a few steps in the water and run with wet feet.  No big deal.  A van had gotten stuck in the mud here, and Camille's husband, Brandon, pulled him out.  He thrives on that kind of stuff.  So best mile : 7:30, worst mile : 9:47.  Didn't hit my goal, but was okay with it.  See tomorrow's entry for the remainder of the race report.