2014 Ragnar Relay Chicago Recap

There's really no short version of my experience running the Ragnar Relay from Madison to Chicago with the Wurst Ragnar Team Ever this weekend, so try to stick with me (at least there's pictures?).  Where to even start?  I guess I could go all the way back to a Pint Night run last summer when some of the ladies of the WRCE who had done Ragnar last year were talking about starting up a team.  Of course, at that time I thought maybe I'd offer to drive for them or something - surely I couldn't take part in a ultra marathon relay, could I?  I pretty much put that out of my mind until this winter when Erin started putting a team together.  I don't know what made me change my mind, or perhaps I didn't really even think about it, but before I knew it I had committed to join the WRTE.

Crap. What did I do?  Did we have any back-ups lined up just in case I couldn't hack it?  Would this totally kill my legs?  How could I avoid letting my team down?

My three legs totaled 13.3 miles, so just over a half marathon.  My longest leg was 5.6 miles, so that didn't seem too intimidating.  Except that I had unintentionally been tapering my running in the weeks following the Wisconsin Marathon.  But I built up a good enough base during my training all winter that I could still pull a decent 10-miler out of my ass a couple weeks ago, so maybe this wouldn't be a total disaster.

But enough about my concerns about the actual running part, I had heard so many good things about the Ragnar experience that I was really looking forward to it!  I was runner #10 in Van 2 (which we dubbed "The Meat Wagon"), along with fellow Wurst runners Mo, Eric and Lindsay, and two gals from one of Erin's other running clubs, Zoe and Jessica.  And although I had offered to do the bulk of the driving, Maggie volunteered to drive us around once she realized she wouldn't be able to run because of her emo knee.  I was a little bummed that she wasn't in our van in the first place, so that worked out nicely.

Ladies of the Meat Wagon... AND ERIC

Based on our average team pace, we were assigned a start time of 11 am on Friday.  The first teams started running at 5:30 am, so it was a little weird to see all the Twitter updates about that when I was waking up on Friday morning.  Van 2 wasn't due to start our legs until about 4:30 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to make our way up to the first major exchange in Lake Mills, WI for lunch, a mandatory safety briefing, van decorating (which lead to the embarrassing discovery that I absolutely can't draw a sausage) and some team bonding/ice-breaking via Cards Against Humanity.

The Meat Wagon is ready to go

It was cool to walk around the exchange and check out everyone else's vans.  There were a lot of really great ones, but my favorite was probably the Peter Francis Geracers, maybe because it's such a random idea? (for those outside of Chicago, Peter Francis Geraci is a bankruptcy lawyer here with bad, kind of dry commercials)

At around 4ish (maybe 4:30? no idea) it was time to head over to the exchange and send our first runner, Mo, off on her way.  We had about an hour to get to the next exchange to meet her, but we headed straight there anyway.  I kind of thought just hanging out in a van all day would be boring (though, obviously, it would be in good company), but the time between legs really flew by.  And as runner 10, I spent most of legs 7, 8 and 9 just preparing for my run (hydrating, having a snack, getting my shoes and gear on, getting over any last-minute race jitters, etc.).

Kicking things off for the Meat Wagon

Ladies waiting for the Lone Sausage at a winery

Leg 1: 5.6 miles - 1:12:43 (12:37 pace)
Start time: 7:01 pm
My first leg started just as the sun was going down and went east, so the lighting the entire time was pretty beautiful.  The whole leg went along the Glacial Drumlin Trail in Helenville, WI.  It was all crushed limestone and there were no hills, per se, but a gradual incline and decline of about 100 feet.  That doesn't sound like much, but it definitely started catching up with me.  As did the heat, as it was still in the upper 70's when I started running.  I definitely didn't move as fast as I would have liked - my legs just took some time to warm up (sitting in a van all day may have contributed to that) and I couldn't really get into a good rhythm. My plan was to run this leg in 5:1 intervals (so run half a mile, walk a tenth) to conserve energy for my other legs, and I'm glad I stuck to that.  It was really nice to have those walk breaks to look forward to, and I did run my intervals fast enough that I didn't stray from my expected pace of 12:30 too much.

Handoff from Zoe; finishing my leg

One cool thing about this leg is that the trail crosses a few main roads, meaning a lot of teams stopped to cheer on their runner.  The Meat Wagon did stop for me, but I guess they were at mile 4 way earlier than I would have been there, so we missed each other.  Thankfully they got a cute group selfie out of it, and I did still get to see a lot of other teams, which helped me keep going.

Oh hey, Van 2

We all finished our first legs by around 10pm, handed things back off to Van 1 and headed off in search of dinner, sleep and maybe even a shower.  The biggest disappointment of the night was learning that Noodles & Co, which sounded awesome to all of us, closed at 10, not 11 (as Google had led us to believe).  So with very few options we had no choice but to have dinner at the slowest McDonald's ever.

Thankfully I had plenty of Mo's salty Nice Balls to tide me over until we reached the golden arches

We finally made it to the next big exchange at about 11:30.  I went inside to change, clean off a little and brush my teeth before trying to get a little sleep.  Mo, who I was sharing the back of the van with, wanted to sleep inside the school we were at, so I at least got to stretch out in the van. The parking lot was pretty noisy so I didn't get much more than a 10 minute power nap before I heard Maggie say that Van 1 was expecting their runner to hand off to Mo in about 30 minutes.  I tried to get a little more sleep on the way to the next exchange, but it just wasn't happening.  By 1am I was pretty much wide awake.

Leg 2: 4.0 miles - 48:05 (12:01 pace)
Start time: 3:38 am
Ah, the night leg.  I was the most nervous about this one since the map noted that it went along country roads in Racine, WI that don't have street lights.  I guess I've lived in a big city long enough to know that it's not safe to be out by yourself in the middle of the night.  But you're never truly running alone at Ragnar - not only were there plenty of other runners, but the vans went along the same route (the Meat Wagon found me this time!), so I wasn't quite in the dark, desolate setting I envisioned (but dammit, I was still going to be on the lookout for Bigfoot).  I made sure I was very well-lit, thanks, in part, to a super bright head lamp borrowed from Eric when my $5 one didn't seem like it'd cut it; and by wearing the brightest outfit I could put together.

Ready or not, Bigfoot, here I come

The weather was pretty much perfect for this leg - low 50's and the air was just a touch damp, so the light from my handheld flashlight and the headlamp made foggy halos, which was kind of cool.  It only took about half a mile to get away from the light of the exchange and the few street lamps in the area before it was pitch dark.  I never thought I'd be out running in the middle of the night, but I have to say, it was awesome.  This was, by far, my favorite leg.  I got to see so many stars, including a shooting star, and heard roosters crowing.  Who runs before roosters are awake?!  It was so quiet and peaceful, and because I didn't have music with me, I just focused on the sounds of my breath and my feet hitting the pavement.  It was pretty much a perfect run.  My legs felt surprisingly great and I was able to keep a good pace from start to finish.  I didn't find Bigfoot while out there, but I also didn't get murdered, so I guess it evens out.

The Meat Wagon finished all of its second legs by about 5:45am, just in time to catch the tail end of a gorgeous sunrise over Lake Michigan (check out one of my sunrise pictures on Ragnar's blog!).  After handing off to Van 1 one last time we found a Panera (thank goodness those are open at 6am) for breakfast and crossed the border back into Illinois to get to exchange 30 in North Chicago.  We arrived by about 8am and wouldn't have to start running again until 11, so we actually had some time to sleep!

Most of the Meat Wagon camped out under a big, shady tree to nap. I ended up getting maybe 45 minutes of sleep, feeling wide awake again by 9am.  Guys, I suck at relaxing.  But it was still nice to stretch my legs outside of the van, even if I never did get back to sleep.

Thankfully @OrtonPants was awake too

By about 11:30am Mo was kicking off our van's last legs.  It was a pretty beautiful day, but unfortunately it was starting to get hot again and there weren't too many clouds in the sky.  I made sure to drink even more water than usual before my last leg, knowing that sun and heat are pretty much my enemies.

Leg 3: 3.7 miles - 50:52 (13:44 pace)
Start time: 1:40 pm
I kept my expectations pretty low going into my third leg - between the heat, tired legs, and a total lack of sleep (heck, I had run twice as long as I had slept at that point), it just wouldn't be realistic not to.  Going into it, I tried to remember to just enjoy it because it was my last leg and all, and who knows when I'll be doing another Ragnar.  The last exchange was right by the Glencoe Metra stop, and a bulk of my leg was on the Green Bay Trail, which runs alongside the Metra UP-North tracks.  Note that I live just off of the UP-North line, so I'd be lying if I didn't say that the thought of just catching the train home didn't cross my mind a couple times.  Except that I had no train pass or money, and no trains came through.  But still.

I have no pictures of my last leg, so here's the exchanges leading up to me

I had heard from the rest of my van that there were a lot of walkers on their legs.  That hadn't happened in the other legs, so I took that as a warning to take it easy.  I started out doing 4:1 intervals, which I kept up for the first 1.5 miles.  The annoying thing was that my legs were just absolutely dead when I started out, and once they warmed up I was having heat issues, so I switched to 1:1 intervals.  I hated to slow down so much and didn't want to put my team too far behind (thankfully we had gained 30 minutes overnight!), but I was really struggling.

At least, I was until the leg turned away from the train tracks and toward the lake, with less than 1 mile to go.  Almost instantly the sky started getting cloudy and I could feel cool breezes coming off the lake.  This gave me the second wind I was so desperately hoping for.  I kicked things back into gear and ended up getting my only 2 kills (for the uninitiated, a "kill" is when you pass another runner), both within about 20 seconds of each other.  I didn't really think much of other runners passing me, but I have to say, actually being able to pass someone was really cool.  Despite my rough start I finished at least somewhat strong, but I was pretty wiped out once I handed off to Jessica.

Total legs: 13.3 miles - 2:51:20 (12:52 pace)
One thing that's really cool (that I didn't think about until Eric pointed it out the other day) is that my combined legs would result in a half marathon PR of about 5 minutes (factoring out the extra .20 miles)!  My average pace at Wisconsin was 13:20 and my overall average Ragnar pace was 12:52, so that's something to keep in mind  when I start training for a fall half.

Bringing up the rear at the finish line

Once our last runner, Lindsay, started her leg in Evanston, the race was on to beat her to the finish line.  Her leg was just over 9 miles, and she's pretty fast, so this was actually a challenge going up against Chicago traffic.  But we made it to the finish line about 15 minutes before Lindsay and the team was all able to finish together.  In the end, the team finished in 29:31:20, coming in 159th place out of 502.  Not too shabby!

The after-party included pizza and beer, but most of us were pretty beat, so we didn't stick around too long (in fact, Mo and I even had extra beer tickets to give away, which was a little sad, but I wanted a shower and a nap more than that free beer).

Yep, we earned those beers

All in all, everything about my experience with Ragnar was just wonderful.  It's a pretty well-oiled machine, and the only hiccups I noticed were in relation to the new finish location (which had been changed somewhat recently, but parking and shuttle buses were provided, which wasn't terrible).  They've otherwise managed to coordinate logistics so well that 12 people running a 196.1 mile relay is surprisingly smooth.

And as for my van - gosh, what can I say about the Meat Wagon (aka Ladies #andEric)?  6 or 7 grown adults spending that much time together in a van while not getting much sleep could go horribly, horribly wrong, but I had so much fun!  There's a lot about the camaraderie at Ragnar (on the teams and just the event overall) that is hard to explain to anyone who wasn't there, and a lot of inside jokes that are probably a little less hilarious to everyone else. But I'm happy to have a lot of great memories to look back on.  And I feel really lucky to be on a non-competitive team that was supportive and encouraging of everyone's differing paces (especially mine, which was several minutes slower than the team's average) and just wanted to have fun. All of that is what made Ragnar the Wurst.