The Good, the Bad and then there's the RAGNAR!!!

Van 1- Brittny, Brenda, Melissa, Heidi, Kelly, and Brook

It took me long enough but here is our crazy adventure of a race. To start off we ran a relay race that was 202 miles starting in Prescott, AZ and ended in Mesa, AZ. We had a team of 12 women called "Haulin' Asphalt". You have two vans with 6 runners in each and we all run 3 different times-sounds fun, right? On the night before the race (Thursday) Brittny's sister in law who flew in from Texas got the flu so we called our wonderful backup, Brenda, at 9:30p and she said she would do it-SUCKA! So we left Friday morning at 6:30a to start our race at 9:30a. All was well until our 4th runner Heidi is 2 miles into her run and we see her hobbling. She hurt her knee and she is out-sad!

The race goes on quite smoothly until we get a call at 3am that there was an accident and an 18 year old boy was hit by a car. My heart and prayers go out to this family because 2 days ago he passed away. Many people dropped out at this time and most of us thought the race would be cancelled but it wasn't and in fact their highschool team (Brophy) actually finished the race, I was very impressed!

This makes it so van 2 has to skip 3 legs of the race and we have to hurry to the last big exchange to start running again. Tired? Oh YES! At this point poor Brittny has food poisoning and is very sick so we have to leave her in Wickenburg at our hotel-thank goodness we had a hotel! Van 1 is now down to 4 runners! We split the legs of the race up so those who did not get to do their second run were able to run some of ours since we were lacking runners at the time. At this point we had one more runner injure her knee in van 2. Needless to say, we finished the race and had a great time!!!

So why would anyone do a race like this? Because the craziness, the adventure and all of the bonding time that a team of runners experience leaves you wanting more and more!!! I should know, this was my 4th and craziest one of all and I walked away uplifted and invigorated!

Side note: Since I was not super great at getting my camera out I don't have any pics of the whole team so when I get some I will definitely post because I certainly don't want to leave them out of this!

Running in style! Photo by Brenda