Las Vegas Ragnar! 2010

Vegas BABY!!!

A week after The Wasatch Back I was on that runners high thinking I could do ANYTHING! My friend from high school, Emily and I chatted back and forth on Facebook she said she thought the relay sounded soo fun she would love to do it one day! well I didn't tell her I had already looked thru the rest and had an eye on Vegas. But I soon told her and we talked about going. I quickly talked with Don about it and his usual sure whatever pushed me over the edge! I immediately wrote her told her I was in. I soon got a message back and I went right the the Ragnar home page and posted in their forum we needed a team! I would go back every day and see how many people had looked at my post cuz I came right out and said we wouldn't be any help if you actually wanted to win. pretty much who wants to slow old women on your team :) well a couple weeks later I got an email! I was sooo excited and posted to Emily to call me as soon as she could! I was heading up to Park City to drop my son off for summer camp but she called on my way there and we chatted and we both were excited. ! I then thought I wonder if Don really is gonna let me do this! I got home before I emailed the captain back and talked to Don. He was for it! With in a day or two of getting on teh team I got another email saying they were looking for more runners so I called JaNae, My BRF (best running friend), and she talked to Tom (her husband) and she was on The Unknown's! I got him the check and then it was the waiting game. Soon time passed quickly and here we are it is all over and I am now blogging it!!
Emily flew in Thursday morning, I picked her up. WOW I haven't seen Emily probably since graduation (ok within a few months of graduating!) which was more years ago than I'd like to remember! She wanted to visit with her gramma so I took her there. I had a bunch to do so I had to be on the ball! Around 2 Don got off work and he came home finished packing his stuff we loaded everything up and headed to the school to pick up the kids, took them to Gramma's, went and picked up Emily and then headed to Tom and JaNae's we all drove down together. Finally on the road about 4:30. Sweet Laura across the street from JaNae brought over a big bag of peanut M&M's. We pulled into Mesquite late Thursday night and checked in then got some food. Us girls all got Spaghetti. As we were eating I got a text from our team captain saying he was checking in. I said should we go meet our team? We had never met any on them. So we went and met almost everyone!
We had talked over the months about changing the name but never did and it is funny cuz by the time we got to Vegas I think there were only a few people who actually knew anyone. Van one: Dan, Michelle (those two are married), Ronn, Mitch, Jason and Doug. Van 2: Nilo, Matt, Alan, JaNae, Emily and me.
We went back to the rooms after dinner. Everyone was pretty tired but we, Anna my sister also came down with us, Don and I went to the casino. Don won $500 in the slots which was awesome!
Tom was sad the next morning when he found out we had gone out with out him. crazy me another 3 hours of sleep that night. arg...
We met our team at 11am to head to our exchange! NIlo was our first runner from our van so as Jason came in Nilo went off. We headed to our next exchange. this really felt different from The Wasatch Back. I think I was really nervous for WB. This time I knew what to expect for the most part. but I was really tired! JaNae ran next, then Matt, Emily and then me. Like I said I was tired! I had only slept maybe 3 hours that night and the night before that I hadn't slept much either. My run was 2.5 miles (the smallest run of the whole race) and marked as easy. I was expecting to do it rather quickly. I did Not do it quickly in fact it wasn't easy at all it was almost all uphill!! 2.5 miles in 26 minutes. I handed off to Alan who was runner 12 so we would soon meet up with our van 2. I was seriously disappointed in myself. In fact I really wanted to cry. I was really tired I climbed in the back totally sad. but everyone was so encouraging and lifted my spirits. We were already 20 minutes ahead of our projected finishing time.
After we handed off We drove to our next stop where we told the husbands to come meet us cuz my phone charger was forgotten. we met them at our stop and they game me the charger and we talked for a while (we really should have been sleeping). as soon as we went up to where everyone else was sleeping we laid down just to get that dreaded phone call that van 1 was getting close so we packed up our stuff and went to meet them. I grabbed the back of the van so I could lay down. I stuck my head phones in and slept till it was my turn to run. good thing I did! this next leg was listed as hard and it was 7.2 miles. I was really worried about this one. it had been a few weeks since I had gone that distance. it turns out this leg was actually the easiest of the three. 7.2 in 1 hour 6 minutes! I have never ran that average pace before! I was soo happy! it was a good boost I needed! after we handed off to Van 2 we cruised to the next major exchange and got to sleep again. However it was soo cold (seriously isn't this Las Vegas??) that we all slept in the van. I stuck my head phone sin my ears and tried to get comfy. I guess there was someone snoring (not me) but they never bothered me. I think I was smart to stick the music in my ears. I still didn't sleep great because it is hard to get comfortable sitting up. once the sun had risen I needed to go to the bathroom and stretch! I didn't want to get back in the van yet so I walked around and decided to head up to the exchange and watch. Oh the smell!!! PANCAKES!! I wasn't passing those up! At the exchanges they have food you can buy and the money goes to something local. this money went to the local school. They were soo delicious and a bonus for something hot in my stomach! I walked around after and decided they had to be getting close so I went back to the van (don't worry I texted them letting them know there were yummy pancakes they didn't want any?!) and everyone was up and starting to get ready. they had worked it out that the next runner would be around a certain time. In my head I thought he'd be about 10 minutes faster so without sharing my opinion I encouraged tehm to get to the exchange quicker but they didn't budge and by the time we got there Jason was waiting :(. Well Nilo took off and we were at it again for our last legs... how did this happen so fast!! We waited soo long and now it was almost over!! well when my leg was up I was ready it was so cold and the wind was howling :( before I even started I had a side ache :(