Ragnar Las Vegas Style

Well, I am venturing into the world of bloggers. No better way than to start with our recent family adventure into the realm of Ragnar. For those of you who may not know, Ragnar is a relay race consisting of 12 runners traveling some 190+ miles in a continuous race. Brian was the real impetus in getting us involved in this crazy ordeal. Brian and I participated in the Wasatch Back Ragnar in June of 2009 and really wanted to do this as a family. We originally were going to do this in June of 2010 but Jake and Christie decided to get married at the same time. (It was a good choice!) So we signed up to run the Ragnar in Las Vegas. We recruited and coerced 12 people to run. Myself, Deanna (she fell victim to peer pressure), Brian, Jonathan, Abby, Jacob, Eric, Julie (my sister-in-law), Caleb (my nephew), Jim, (my brother-in-law) , Tim (my brother), and David Tribe (Jonathan's friend). Some of us have run more than others and some haven't really run at all (Eric).

We drove to Mesquite on Thursday Oct 21st and stayed the night at the Virgin River Hotel and casino. After getting some sleep we drove about 90 minutes to the start at Valley of Fire State Park the next morning. Our group was split into 2 cars. We started at 9:45 a.m. and Deanna was our first runner. She ran over 5 miles over with some pretty big hills. She was awesome. Everyone took their turn until the afternoon when our car was finished and we handed off to the second van. It was great to see Jake and Jim who were in the other van. They drove up from Phoenix that morning and began running. After those 6 in the other van finished their run we traded off and we all ran again. We finished our second legs around midnight and drove to a motel about 30 minutes away for a couple of hours of sleep. We then transitioned again early in the morning. Deanna's third leg was a killer. It was straight up hill.

We all cheered and encouraged everyone along the way. However, by the time we were running our third legs everyone was beat. It was hard to get up the energy to do more than offer a weak "good job". Finally around 5:00 p.m. we all gathered at the Red Rock Casino where Brian made his triumphal entry. We all gathered together and crossed the finish line together. It was an emotional experience. We had enough time to quickly grab our medals, say a quick good-bye to Jake and Jim before we headed home again. We arrived home in Ogden about 3:00 a.m. and got a couple of hours of sleep before church.

In order to run the Ragnar Relay you have to learn a new lingo. Words such as "leg", "kill", "van", "ultra" etc. have a new and different meaning. You have to run the Ragnar in order to learn the meaning of these words. Maybe we will do it again, maybe not. It is definitely one of those things that you need to check off of the "bucket list".