Ragnar Napa 2014!

[ashes]

Over the weekend my husband and I ran in the Ragnar Napa relay race!  It's a 36-hour, 200-mile relay from San Francisco to Calistoga.  You have a 12-person team, which is split into 2 van with 6 people in each.  Each person runs 3 legs of the race.  It was tiring, but loads of fun!  There are other Ragnars in other parts of the country.  Has anyone else done one?

Our team name was Power Ragnars.  We also decorated our vans - because every other team has giant white vans as well, it makes it easy to pick yours out from the crowd.

One team there was called My Little Ponies!  I tagged their van with a pony pic.



Here are some pics:



The back of our team shirts

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After I finished up my third leg:

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My vanmates  (our 12-person team was split into 2 vans with 6 people each)

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Whole team at the finish line!

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[kaoskat]

Very cool! It looks like you had fun!

[melodys_angel]

Man, that looked like a ton of fun!

Love the theme, too xD

[hathorcat]

I am still super impressed! So much hard work and dedication. Congrats, ashes.

[flyawayraven]

I'm not much of a runner, but you certainly couldn't have picked a prettier place to hold the run!

[ashes]

I'm not much of a runner, but you certainly couldn't have picked a prettier place to hold the run!

It really was quite beautiful. Except for my second leg - that was in the dark, on a highway with a lot of roadkill.  I was jealous of my husband - he was the one that got to run across the Golden Gate Bridge!

[Hervoyel]

Looks like a fun race!  Love your team theme!

I've done relays before, but never a Ragnar one, so it's great to hear about experiences at other races.  What kind of time did you guys run?

[ashes]

Looks like a fun race!  Love your team theme!

I've done relays before, but never a Ragnar one, so it's great to hear about experiences at other races.  What kind of time did you guys run?

It was super fun.  You know, I haven't looked up our final race time, but when we signed up, each runner had to give their 5k pace so we could project when each runner would finish their leg (which makes it much easier to offer support during the longer legs and arrive at the proper time at each exchange).   I kept about a 9 min/mile pace, but we had some runners on our team who did 7 min and 8 min paces.  We also all added each other to the Find My Friend App so we could track runners (which was especially helpful for the night runs).  One of our van mates did get a few miles off course during his night run, but since we all had our phones and that app, we could direct him back.

Our van did pretty well - we stayed within about 5 minutes of our projected times.  For most people this race is about being social and having fun - cheering other runners on, offering support and cheers to your runner at certain points during their long runs, and tagging other vans.  There were a few ultra teams where they ran it with a 6-person team as opposed to 12.

[kakenterprise]

Ranger racing...  Where do I sign up?_?

That's mixing two things that I love!!

How awesome!!

[flyawayraven]

I'm not much of a runner, but you certainly couldn't have picked a prettier place to hold the run!

It really was quite beautiful. Except for my second leg - that was in the dark, on a highway with a lot of roadkill.  I was jealous of my husband - he was the one that got to run across the Golden Gate Bridge!

Yuck! That does not sound fun at all! I'm also super jealous of your husband; was it actually a clear day too?

[ashes]

No, we had fog, but it was just dusting the bridge, so it was still quite pretty.  My first leg was through Sausalito, so that made up for my night run. 


I looked up our race time, and out of 561 teams, we placed 121st.