A couple weeks ago I got to do my second Ragnar Trail! Trail is different than a regular Ragnar in several ways. First of all I've done 4 Ragnar Del Sol plus my first Ragnar was the Wasatch Back in Utah. In those races there are 12 runners and the race has an early Friday morning start and a Saturday afternoon finish. No one runs the same three legs as anyone else on their team. You start in one city and wind through and finish in another city 200 miles later.
With Ragnar Trail there are 8 runners running the same three legs while camping out in the same area. Everyone at the race runs the same three legs labeled RED, YELLOW, and GREEN and they all started and finished at the same place.
These photos are kind of all over the place but that's kind of how a Ragnar feels. You're eating, running and sleeping at strange times.
Here's part of the team! Our team was an Edward Jones work team. Dan McKay works for Edward Jones and he invited me on. Besides his cousin, Robert McKay, I didn't know anyone else on the team before race day. It's aways fun getting to know some new awesome runners.
On the far left is James Weinmann (he's the oldest and fastest in the group and has run several marathons but this was his first Ragnar), then Kim Phair (married to Steve Phair- they both run races all the tines for fun), next is me, then Dan McKay, then Robert McKay, then Bret Seeley a dad who has biological children and an adopted son plus he has a foster girl who is like a daughter. Really awesome group.
Just missing from the photo the team captain Julie Reid and Steve. Julie is on the left of the below photo. The only three not working for Edward Jones was Robert, Kim, and me. We were team "Buy Sell Hold Run" and we ran for 27 hours with a total of about 15.2 miles total each.
^ ^ James ^ ^
Everyone had a least one night run where you provide your own light by headlamps or flashlights. I had two night runs which isn't a bad thing because it gets pretty hot in the afternoon, like my last run.
^ ^ Dan ^ ^
^ ^ Robert ^ ^
Can you see Four Peaks in the distance? This was on my last run.
There were food trucks to grab food. I brought some snacks but bought a pulled pork sandwich for dinner, and this sourdough bowl egg with bacon and sausage for breakfast.
Bret, Kim and Steve had to leave early so just the five of us at the end of the race. Feels so good to finish. I was the last runner so it feels special to finish the team off in the race.
Ragnar has done this for a few years where you put all your medals together and it writes our a secret message. "WE ARE REGNARIANS TOGETHER WE CAN...". I got the top left "...Blaze new trails". I like that. If you pull the orange necklace part off you can pull out the metal survival utility tool. It has a special name Andrew said but I don't remember. Pretty cool though.
Here's the YELLOW leg I ran first at 7:30pm. We had a noon start time but being runner 8 I didn't start until after dinner time. The race said it was 4.5 but my maps said 4.62 and it was a very bumpy trail. Definitely felt longer than four and a half and I was glad to get it done early.
Here is the GREEN leg, the race had down for 4.2 miles. I started tracking a bit late. Started this ru before 4:30 in the morning and I had about a 5 hour sleep before which is pretty good for a Ragnar. Great pace. It goes gradually uphill then gradually downhill. I saw a snake (possibly a rattle snake) around mile 3 a few feet out from the trail but it wasn't interested in me. Just a nice run and really quiet that third mile before joining up at the end.
Here is the RED leg. Red and Yellow are the hardest. Whichever one you ran last and in the heat was the hardest for that person. Red was definitely it for me. It is the longest distance (the race said 6.6 miles), my legs were tired, my eating and sleep were off, the first few miles were steep and very rocky, and I started the run at 1:43pm. It took me and hour and a half. My goal was under a 14 minute per mile mace average which I got! I actually forgot to stop tracking after finishing since my team was there and we were done so I didn't better than it says. Mostly it was just hot and I didn't see very many people on the run since many teams had finished and were headed home.
Now I have run 7 Ragnars! Feels good to say that, and they won't be my last!
