Ragnar 2011

Ran the Logan to Park City (190ish mile) Ragnar relay race this past weekend. Our van (half of our 12-person team, "Shay's Team") included fabulous team captains Shay & Michelle, Shay's brother Braden & wife Savannah, Tonya, and me. We decorated the van with window chalk and crepe paper. Out of the thousands of decked-out vehicles we saw, only one other had crepe paper. I think we must've missed the "don't be white trash" memo. Meh.

 Michelle & Shay tie-dyed these shirts for all of us. I love mine and will probably live out the rest of the summer in it. Even on laundry day. Don't ask how that'll work...I'll figure it out.

Rules of Ragnar: if you get outside the van, you have to hold the orange flag. (I saw one guy peeing on the side of the road...and I only noticed him BECAUSE of the orange flag. Surely that would be an exception to the rule?) From 7:30 p.m. until 6:30 a.m. you have to wear a reflective vest at all times while outside of the van. 'Cept Tonya and I didn't sleep in our vests, even though we slept in sleeping bags in the middle of a grassy field OUT of the van. I know. Rebels.

 A slap bracelet is the "baton" for the relay. Tonya was runner 5 and I was runner 6, so she always passed it to me, along with my GPS watch we were sharing. We were super cut-throat competitors, as you can see in the uberswift transaction above (top left). Some of the roads were also dusty (especially Tonya's route up Avon Pass), made dustier by all the vans driving through to "leapfrog" their runners and cheer them on. We tried to cheer our runners every 1.5 to 3 miles...after we totally messed up with our first runner super-Shay and pretty much left him to run the 7 miles solo. We didn't know! We're rookies! Still...lame.

Know what else is lame? Me, accidentally honking very nearby to some horses trot-walking along the road that our runner was on. In my defense, I was honking to cheer on Michelle. In the horses' defense, I'm a loser and just plumb forgot they were there. So. I apologized, the horse-riding lady chewed me out, so I figure in the grand scheme of things we're even.

For my particular routes, one was about 7 miles mostly a moderately steep downhill, one was a little over 8 miles mostly a mild to moderate uphill, and one was a nice lolling neither-up-nor-down 3-mile jaunt through town. The second run was a bear for me (who wants to run up a mountain at 1 a.m.? one-two-three NOT IT).

It was such a great experience. The guys in my van were/are awesome, and we had a lot of fun. If I do it again, I'm going to train better. And NOT try to eat an enormous hamburger, pile o' fries, and oreo shake right after finishing. Sounds like a heavenly idea, right? I thought so too. Until I actually did it...

Thanks Shay, Michelle, Tonya, Savannah, & Braden! You guys are awesome. No seriously. Long live De Agony of De Feet.

st george half marathon

a bunch of girlfriends and my beloved SIL tonya and i ran in st. george this past weekend. it was awesome. except tonya and i were slightly disappointed at the start of the race that there weren't that many weird people. everyone was normal. which made me nervous that i was the weird one. (seinfeld)

 T and i stuck out the proverbial wall and cruised through the finish line at a cool 1:55:something. then we promptly loaded our greedy grubby little arms full of every piece of food available at the finish-line tables. my stomach didn't particularly thank me later, but i didn't care. because a half marathon is WAAAAAY better/easier to run than a marathon. it's, like, more than twice better. half the distance, at least eight times the better-ness. i'm hooked.

 here's the whole crew (minus lotti, who's behind the camera). it was glorious weather, and we spent as much time as we could handle in the hotel's hot tub afterward. i lasted about 10 minutes before i started feeling a bit woozy-headed, but a quick dip in the pool solved that no problem.

here's my post-race cartwheel-o-joy. tonya has a pretty sweet one, too, but it's on her camera. nothing better than the feeling you have when a race is done. unless that feeling is "sick." thennnnn i can think of quite a few things better. like...pretty much everything. but i felt great!

it was a perfectly lovely weekend. we laughed, we cried, we consumed lots of delicious calories and shopped til we dropped. not literally but very very close. i have awesome friends.