The Dish about Dish: Las Vegas Ragnar!

This year I ran my first Ragnar race. My cousin Jenny convinced me back in May to run with her and some of her friends from her ward. Since I had already signed up for the half marathon at the end of August I thought I could continue training for the Las Vegas Ragnar and would be in decent shape.

This of course was before I tore the muscle in my calf, but luckily I had time to recover. I wasn't at my fastest, but I was feeling okay when race day came.

I was runner #8 in Van 2. I ran a total of 14.5 miles in 3 legs (4 miles, 4.5 miles, 6 miles) in a 24 hour period of time with virtually no sleep. It was surprisingly very HOT in Vegas for the end of October and when our van started at 2pm on Friday it was 90 degrees outside. As you run the race your van support leap frogs you and has water, cheering and anything else you might need.

My runs were at 3:30pm, 1am and 11:30am. My first run was very hot (as you can tell by the redness of my face!).

Thank goodness for van support to dump water on your head.

And I'm off!

My second run was during the middle of the night, but it was by far my favorite run. It was cool, a little downhill and I felt awesome! I ran 9:30 min miles which was a full minute faster than I normally had been running post injury. I really don't think I've had a better run in my life. No photos of course since it was 1am, but it was awesome.

There was a hotel at exchange 24 (our last major exchange with the other van). It was the Gold Strike hotel which wasn't the nicest or cleanest hotel, but the fact that we got 2.5 hours of real sleep not in the car and in a quiet room was awesome. Most people slept in the parking lot!

My final run started around 11:30am. It came after Jenny ran the "Ragnar" leg which was 5 miles up 1200ft in elevation and then 5 miles down 1200 feet in elevation. She did amazing. I have to admit I would have DIED doing her runs. As the next runner I was her support and since it was the middle of the day again it was super hot.

My final run was about 6 miles. Not the prettiest of runs as you can see, but I totally killed this run. One of the "fun" things to do during the Ragnar race is to see how many people you "kill" (pass). Of course we were not keeping track of how many times we got killed, but on my final run I killed 7 people! I had only killed 3 people on both of my previous runs combined.

Here I am at the end of my final run handing off to Hannah. You can see my last "kill" in the background. I sprinted the last .25 of a mile (6:45 min miles according to my watch) to kill her. I was especially proud of this kill because this van was always by us and they did not have a nice team name or very nice drawings on their van (let's just say they were very "Las Vegas").

I have to admit that this is the first time that I actually ENJOYED running and I would for sure do another Ragnar. I ran further than a half marathon but I loved it more. I think I liked having the break in between. Our van was so fun and we had such a good time giggling and being girls.

This is where we hung out for 24 hours straight!