Last night I slept for 13 hours. I have been sleep deprived for two days.
So my friend A had a friend organize a mixed team to run the Ragnar Relay this weekend. Simply put, it's a race where teams for 12 (there were over 60 teams) in 2 vans run 189 continuous miles from Blaine (by the Canadian border) to Langley (on Whidbey Island)
It's hard to compress the last 40 hours in one entry, but suffice it to say that it was one of the coolest things I've ever done. Van 1 of our team (which started running at 8am) left Seattle on Thursday afternoon due north. We tried to sleep as much as we could on Thursday night at the luxurious Motel 8.
At 7:30 we checked in, and at 8, our first runner took off. Each of us was going to run 3 legs, and as runner #3, I was expected to run at 10am and 8pm on Friday and then again at 8am on Saturday.
By 11, our van was done, and van 2 took over. We got some lunch and relaxed for a couple of hours before we had to head out again to start our next legs. We were ahead of schedule and finished a bit before midnight. The next van got the short end of the stick, as all of their runners had to run in the middle of the night, many times on big country roads where cars and trucks go fast and the shoulder is only wide enough for one runner. It was them and their headlamps, running in the dark, while we in van 1 tried to get a few hours of sleep in one of the local high schools. We later heard that one of the runners on another team got hit by a car at 2am that night. I'm not sure how he was doing, but I hope he is ok.
We were not expected to start our runs until around 5am, so needless to say we were surprised to get a call from van 2 at 2:40 in the morning, informing us that their last runner had already started and we should start heading over to the next exchange point. We had only slept about 3 hours. At around 4, Adrienne, our first runner began her third and final leg. She and KT had to run with headlamps on, and I took over at around 6ish. Fortunately for me, it was bright out and I only had an easy 2.5 miler.
Our team finished 3rd to last in our division, which is, well, better than last. It was tons of fun though following our runners and others; cheering for them and spending for some 36+ hours stuck together, mostly in a stinky van. It was definitely a great experience, and I'd do it all over again.
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2 comments:
Congrats... that race sounded great. Are you doing Hood to Coast?
I hope the organizers do something about the running along the street in the dark-thing next year... set up flood lights, or something. No one should ever get hit by a car in an organized race.
Hey Kelly! Sounds like an awesome experience!
Thanks for checking out the blog! Dacia should have one soon as well. I originally sent that email to your gmail account, which was the only one I had--not sure if I mistyped it or something :( Sorry!
Hope all is well!
--Teeem
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