This isn’t your average 10K or half marathon, this is Ragnar!" As read on the Great River Ragnar website
This all sounds like fun, right?!?! I thought so when I first caught wind of such an event. My good friend and training partner, Meghann Kruck brought it up one day last winter when we'd met to pound the pavement for a few miles. When I got home that day, I googled this event and thought, "Hey! That sounds like a lot of fun" and I sent Meghann a message simply stating that I was in. As the day kept inching closer and closer on the calendar, I realized that saying "yes" was the ONLY easy part!
So, now what? I'd said yes, so we had a team of 2! Luckily, it wasn't too much harder to find several other people that thought this sounded like a great idea, too! And so Team Suburban Assault (#136) came to be and on May 5, it became official after >$1000 landed on my credit card statement and I was the team's captain (which at the time meant nothing more than creating a Facebook page to create an easy way to keep in contact with everyone). Unfortunately, the easy parts were now crossed off the list and there were several hiccups we encountered on the road to race day, which was August 19-20, 2011. Seriously, who would think that keeping a team of 12 together for 4 months would be so difficult?!?!
In an ideal Ragnar world we have 12 team members and 2 drivers split up into 2 vehicles. I had heard from a few different sources that we would go insane if we tried to cram 7 people into a minivan or even a Honda Pilot that seats 7 (because let's face it. A Honda Pilot that seats 7 comfortably seats 2 adults and 5 people that have much smaller bums {i.e. children}) since we also had to fit all of our gear and food for 36 hours into the same vehicle. So with input of several of my team members, I went on a mission and booked two 12 passenger vans for 48 hours so that we wouldn't have to sit sweaty shoulder to sweaty shoulder in the van and we would have room for a few bottles of water (or 48+ bottles of water as the case may be). This was, by far, the best decision I made the entire time as captain for Team Suburban Assault. I'm not sure if the rest of the team agrees with this sentiment (or my husband, for that matter, since that slapped another $600+ onto our credit card), but seriously, we all got along splendidly in our 12 passenger vans and I'm not so sure we would have the same outcome (i.e. 14 live bodies by the end of the race) if we'd traveled in any other way.
Before I knew it, August 1 had come and gone and we had less than 3 weeks before the grand event. We were still shy one team member in Van 1 due to a work conflict and had an injury to contend with in Van 2 so the hardcore recruiting began. We could have run with just 10 team members, but that would entail either 3 members in each van picking up one extra leg OR 1 member in each van picking up three extra legs. The biggest problem in Van 1 (my van) is that the position we were trying to fill had the longest legs and no one really jumped to it to tackle the extra mileage -- I offered, but was not overly enthusiastic because I knew that the legs I already had to run were going to be a huge challenge for me considering the longest race I'd run thus far in my so-called running career was 7K... Luckily, only 4 days before race day we found a runner to take on Position #5 in Van 1 and those of us in Van 1 all breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. OK, I cannot speak for everyone else, but I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. No matter how hard we looked, though, we could not find a replacement for our injured runner in Van 2, but with a couple of weeks off, he felt comfortable jogging his legs at a slower pace, so we were ready to go as a Team of 12 runners and 2 awesome drivers!
It's now the week of the race and our Team's start time was set for 6:00 am. Whoa, what?!?! 6:00 am?!?! Isn't that still the middle of the night?!?! There were conflicting opinions as to whether we should stay in the Cities and drive to Winona on Friday morning or whether we should book a hotel room in Winona or La Crosse. We needed to check in at the starting point one hour before actual race time, so we booked a hotel in La Crosse, crammed 7 people in for a very short night of sleep, got up at ~4:00 am and ended up checking in at the starting line about 5:20 am. Team Suburban Assault was a GO for 6:00 am and Betsy started us off with head lamp, reflective vest, and flashing LED butt lamp along side the lovely Mississippi River.
Betsy passed to Meghann. Meghann passed to Pete. Pete passed to me. I passed to Jack. Jack passed to Phil. And at about 12:15 pm, 6 short hours after we started this adventure, Phil passed to Kalynn who started the journey for Van 2 and the baton (i.e. slap bracelet) was passed to Mark, Melanie, Aaron, Sam, and Maren. Each van controlled the baton three times, so each runner ran three times. My personal lengths were 6.2 mi, 5.0 mi, and 4.2 mi. Each leg was labeled as Easy, Moderate, Hard, or Very Hard -- those labels, however, are very subjective because although my 4.2 mi leg was labeled as only moderate, It was by far my hardest leg -- maybe it was my pessimistic and negative attitude towards hills (that hill was a b!tch) or maybe it was because I'd only gotten about 6 hours of sleep total in the last 48 hours, but regardless I passed that baton to Jack for the last time with a huge smile on my face because I had done it! I had completed my 3 legs and would cross the finish line and that was a WIN in my book!
Will I do it again next year? Yeah, probably. Because, if nothing else, that was a great group of people with which to spend 48 hours in very close quarters. Thank you Suburban Assault for a weekend of great memories! And a huge Thank you to our drivers, Mary and Paul and our volunteers, Matt and Steve!
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