Ragnar Relay Las Vegas!

What a crazy ride! At the time I know I was hating life as my legs were obliterated and we were sleep deprived from being in a van for 33 hours, but looking back it really WAS an awesome experience! It was very difficult, but I completed it and along the way got to meet and get to know a great bunch of girls that I would love to hang out with again!

12 girls got together to form Team Swoobs (Sweaty Boobs for those of you like me that initially had no clue what that meant) and decided to join the Ragnar Relay event in Las Vegas! 195 miles of desert, rocks, and highway tar to run split amongst our team of 12 chicks. Here is Team Swoobs near Lake Mead.

We awoke in the wee hours of the morning on Friday the 22nd to head from the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas to the start line of the race, which was about an hour and a half out in the Valley of Fire state park. Our start time was 7 am, and we got our little course safety briefing beforehand and made sure to sport our smokin’ hot reflective gear!

At 7 am sharp, our first runner Lynn took off and away we were! For the next 33 hours we were one big, sometimes not so happy, family and our van was our home away from home!

I was runner number 6 so it was at about 1 pm that day that I got to run my first leg. Here I am just before, and then at the exchange point as our girl comes running up!

I was so nervous, it was a long leg I had ahead of me and since it was my first one I just remember my legs feeling shaky as I took off!  Eventually I chilled out and was truckin’ along jamming out to my 80’s metal… until the hills started to mess with me and the hot sun came out! Oh man, I was so hot and felt like I would overheat, so up the road a bit I motioned to the girls to get me a bottle of water as I knew what I put in my running belt bottles would not be enough!

So the first half of that leg was SOOOOO hard, but luckily the last half was quite a bit of downhill so I was able to pick up the pace here and there to barrel down them. Out of that entire 8.8 miles there was only one flippin’ water station! The Ragnar people made it sound like they’d have a lot of support to give the runners but they really didn’t, it was totally lame. I had grabbed one of the dixie cups of water at that station to drink some and pour some on my back, but then I was too far up to throw it away in their trash can so I ended up hanging onto it for the rest of the run cause I was feeling guilty about just chucking it. Smokey the Bear says don’t be a quitter, pick up your litter!

The view as I neared Lake Mead was BEAUTIFUL!!! I wish I had taken pictures of the run when I peaked in the hills and could see below, but oh well! After was felt like forever and a day I finally neared the exchange point and passed our relay bracelet off to Amanda (who was a KICK ASS runner!!) and she took off! I was beyond beat as that leg was so hard, I remember feeling like it screwed me for the next runs as my legs were burning so bad! We were able to sneak in some nice photo ops though with the water in the background! Here I am with Lynn, smiling but inwardly miserable haha!

With all of the exchanges, and moving the van ahead to support the runner along the way it was amazing how fast it all really flew by! Before we know it the first night was upon us and out came the sexy headlamps and reflective vests again! I wasn’t feeling too great about running in the middle of the night by myself, so lucky for me I have an awesome honeylove and he agreed to drive out to meet up with me for my nighttime leg and run it with me! Thanks honey for keeping me away from the psychos and rapists! 😉 Bill and Walt also wanted to run with their ladies, so the three of them packed into my car and drove all over the Vegas desert to be with us, THANKS GUYS!!!

That second leg was pretty easy, only about 3 miles and not too bad with the hills. Also it was great to have someone to talk with to keep your mind off of the running! I think that we were running between 10 and 11 pm that night, and it was SO cold so I decided to wear my jacket to run in. Boy was that a mistake, and Lynn had even told us that even though it was cold she got super hot running at night. After about 3/4 of a mile in I decided to take off my jacket to tie it around my waist and while I did that the relay bracelet we exchange between runners came off!! OH NOOOOOOOES!! I didn’t even notice until we were already to the exchange point 2.5 miles later.

I felt SO bad, I was pretty upset! It turned out to not be that big of a deal, the Ragner folks said they could have another bracelet for us at an upcoming exchange, and we could just keep running in the meantime. But still I was bummed, so Greg decided to go back after dropping Walt off at the next exchange and look for it. He found it and saved the day!!! He caught up with us again to give it to the next girl and all was well!

The rest of that night was kind of a blur… I spent about 4 hours of it driving the van as we all shared custody of it. At one of our stops I started falling asleep in the seat so I switched off with another girl and climbed in the back to try to get some sleep. Sleep didn’t happen unfortunately but just being able to close my eyes for a bit and rest was good enough!

To be continued…..