Daylight comes for our second day of the race! At this point everyone is cranky, tired, SORE and desperately want a shower. Still have quite a ways to go, but at least we’re all on our third and final legs! The last leg was definitely the toughest for most as our muscles were already so shot from the two legs prior. My third leg was about 6 miles, and all on an uphill grade which was SO tiring. Since my legs were already unhappy, this just killed ’em!
A couple of miles in my shin splints just started to scream bloody murder and it was so painful to run! I came up to my team at one point cheering me on and had to stop for a sec telling them my shins were killing me. Lucky for me, Adri had some shin sleeves and said I could throw those bad boys on and it should help. Oh sweet Jesus did they ever! 🙂 They kept my lower legs nice and warm, tight and I was able to keep on truckin’! Here we are, where you can see me in the back getting those sleeves on!
I eventually saw the “One Mile to Go” marker and was so happy, the home stretch and then I’m done! I came upon a crossroads though, and typical Ragnar there were two signs, each on opposite sides of the road, with arrows facing in different directions! I stopped here not sure if I was to go straight as the sign on my right said, or left as the sign on my left said. Another runner passed me going straight, but the way everything looked I felt that left was where the runners were to go and straight was were only the vans were to go. Thankfully I was right! With just a little ways to go I mustered up all I could and picked up my pace so I could at least finish strong, since I had to take so many walk breaks because of my shins. Near the finish line I saw the runner that had gone the wrong way earlier come by, poor thing probably lost a good few minutes because of the awful signage!
Hooray I was done!!! Now I just had to stretch it out a bit and away we were with just half of our runners left to go! We saw some beautiful scenery the rest of the day, lots of mountains and beautiful desert landscape. We knew we were getting close, and finally we saw our last runner off to finish it up! The rest of us drove out to the finish line, which was located in the Red Rock Casino and Spa! The cool thing was that we could wait for our girl just before the finish line, so we could all run in together!! That was so awesome, the anticipation of seeing her come around the bend, and cheering our way across the finish line! Here’s a video of our finish line crossing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rli6dkjGEk8
Me and Lynn with her celebratory margarita!
Cleaning off the van to return it
After all was said and done, I was EXHAUSTED and unfortunately for us we had to drive back to SD that night. I ended up calling my friend Brigette so we could visit with her and her husband and go out to dinner (since I was also famished!). I was a stinky mess hehe, so I was also able to take a much needed shower at her house before dinner, thanks Brigette!
We went to Chili’s and I ordered the yummy Southwestern Egg Rolls to start off with, and I was so hungry I didn’t wait for them to cool off and thus ended up burning my mouth OUCH! It still hurts almost a week later, probably not good ;).
I loved catching up with Brigette as it had been over a year since we saw them last so it was a nice way to unwind. The sleep deprivation was catching up with me though and I started nodding off at the table, so I knew that was our cue to leave! I was completely useless and passed out immediately in the car, so thanks honey AGAIN for driving us the whole way home! 🙂
YAY Vegas, Team Swoobs, Greg, and the universe!! xoxoxo!
I pretty much threw catioun to the wind and went for it, but I did resist the urge to sprint it out for the last 400 in an effort to recover a little faster.The second leg I resigned myself to really killing the first half, so I was a lamb being led to the slaughter there. The profile showed about 3.7 miles slightly downhill, followed by about the same uphill. I knew the uphill would hurt regardless, so I went all out and stayed under 5:30 pace for the downhill. It did hurt quite a bit at the end.