Ragnar

Ragnar a couple of weeks ago was awesome!!  

Training for it was so much fun and so good for me physically and mentally.  I've decided that running 25 miles a week is tiring but I LOVE it!  I feel so good when I am in that mode.  

So then the actual race was just icing on the cake!  

Luckily I was with some seriously awesome people (well I don't know about serious, they are all pretty hilarious actually!)--Eric's cousin Natalie and her husband Jordan, Eric's cousins' husbands Scottie and Steve, and Scottie's brother Robby.  

Here's me and Natalie, the girls surviving the boy van!

I have always loved Natalie, she's my age and has always been so sweet to me. :)

 Here I am after my first run trying to get some sleep in a sleeping bag on the ground at a campsite SOMEWHERE up in the mountains!  It didn't work. :)

 Luckily I got my second wind in time for my second run- because it was 12 miles, from about 12 to 2 am!  I made my goal of 8:30 mile average the whole way, and had 30 kills (passed 30 people)!  It was pretty scary sometimes, to be on this trail in the dark by myself!  But right when I started to get a little afraid I'd always see a blinking red light ahead on somebody's back, so I'd just go catch up to them and I wouldn't be alone anymore. :)  I greatly enjoyed some circus peanuts and some music-boombox style- at about mile 10, I hate headphones!  and I think I was the ONLY person in the entire Ragnar (and there were about 20,000 people!) who did not run with headphones!  Everyone thinks I'm crazy, but there's something peaceful about running with a clear head!  And you can see how happy I was about running in the middle of the night:

 My van at the last major exchange, all of us about to start our last legs- we had just had a pancake breakfast and all slept for about an hour and a half on a gym floor. Such good times!

 Not the best example of self-photography, but I was running up this beast of a mountain and I was really happy to know that I only had one mile of straight uphill left!  That last leg was hard, but also very cool because every van that drove by me would shout encouragement, it was a really big boost actually!  I love the camaraderie that comes with this race.  Seeing all the fun team names and decorated vans and funny shirts and costumes- it's great.

 The top!  I was done!  The scenery was gorgeous and we had just watched scenes from Rocky to pump up our second-to-last runner, so I was in a pretty good mood. :)

Sadly I didn't get a picture of our whole team at the end- the other van was 4 of Eric's cousins who are siblings and 2 of their friends.  It was fun to spend time with them at the major exchanges and at the end.  Basically, Ragnar is a big party with 20,000 other crazy runners, so obviously I loved it!  And I was so grateful that Mary could watch my kids since Eric was at scout camp!