We had a fantastic vacation. Unfortunately now that it's been so long since the excitement of the last post... it's hard to want to update this blog right now! Not sure why I'm so bad about updating it if it is beyond a certain date.
Anyway - Last year's Running with Ed event was fun, but it felt like something was a bit off... At least as a running participant that wasn't closely associated with the 'cause' that being Park City's Education system.
This year was MUCH worse. My team this year included my beautiful wife, a younger brother, my only sister, and her husband. My older brother who was in charge of it last year and put it together again for us this year because of his work Charitable Donation fund thing - had a separate team with some coworkers and his awesome daughter Eva. It was great because our two teams were pretty similar (we were faster overall) and we could stick near each other for most of the race (I was the same leg as my brother - it was fantastic to run with him)
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| Team Clan McRagnar - Great Pre-Ragnar experience! |
Our start time was 9:45, I thought that was a bit late when I heard about it, and that would prove to be correct. It was too late. After I started my first leg, we were running down the mountain about halfway through when a guy on a bike rode up to us exclaiming, "Well, you guys are the last ones!" We thought "Who is this guy and what the heck is he talking about?" Turns out this guy (Bill, great guy) was the sweeper for the course, he rides his bike along at the end of the pack informing volunteers along the way that the last runners are gone, that way they know they can be done. I guess the first year he sat at his volunteer station for 2 hours before figuring out the race was over... From this time forward the race exchanges were less and less manned to the point that when I ran into the exchange after my 2nd run - all the cones for the exchange point had been put away and they were informing everybody to get out, they were turning on the alarms at the school!
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| Bill was great! |
The last straw for me (although really I haven't done anything for it yet... so I guess it wasn't REALLY the last straw...) was at the finish line. We ran across to a big crowd of people... all looking at somebody on a stage announcing the winners of the fundraising. Not a single cheer for the 2nd to last team crossing the finish line (although NOT 2nd to last by actual race-time) - nobody to give us our medals (we had to grab 'em ourselves off a hanger) - and nobody to take our official time (7 hours 5 minutes - which is pretty awesome considering we had my sister who has never run an official race in her life and is pretty slow right now (we'll keep improving her!)). A bit frustrating.
Anyway - at least the running and the company was great! I enjoyed it. It's more thinking about it afterwards that makes me annoyed.
One of the fun things I did was Mayurasana at EVERY exchange. Yeah probably a bit much, the pictures of the race make it look more like I was doing yoga instead of running! But hey, I had fun doing it! A few (not all ten!) of those pictures are below.
My first leg I ran 3.9 miles up and over a mountain from the Utah Olympic Park to the Canyons Parking lot. My wife ran the leg before and we stopped to see her on the way up a mean street-hill, so she got up there while I was still in the bathroom! Whoops!
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| Top of the mountain above Utah Olympic Park - during my first run. |
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| With the Ragnar Van! |
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| Woo! Eka Pada Koundayinasana II instead of Peacock! |
My second run was a fun 6 miles - around Park City High School, up through a neighborhood and on some nice but desert-ish trails. Again it was awesome to run that leg with my brother. Bill said "Man, You guys are a lot harder to catch up to!" We kept a decent pace, but not as good as I could have been!
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| Running with my elder Bro - look at that matching gait! |
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| Finish line! Yeah, it was about that empty when we ran through those doors too... |
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| Me and my honey! She's awesome! |
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| He chucked his shoes (which he carried the whole way!) just before the finish. Great pic! |
After the race we went and got our kids, took 'em back to our Condo/Timeshare and had a fantastic rest of the week swimming, hiking, playing, and watching American Ninja Warrior on TV. I need to find some good stairs to do some of the 'Devil's Staircase' exercise. Our condo had a couple I could do it on... I was inspired:
Wednesday we came down into the valley for my son's puppet show and so I could go play paintball for a work-team building activity! Still have bruises on my leg woot! The 2nd game I took out almost everybody (6 out of 7 ain't bad) on the other team, and then I was shot by a team mate ha!
Thursday I ran a couple miles from our condo - WOW. Starting at 7k feet, that is some killer altitude. My lungs were burning!
Fantastic week. This next Saturday, like I mentioned before, is the Dirty Dash! I'm excited!
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