Ragnar Relay

Next week, April 19 & 20, I am participating in an event called the Ragnar Relay.

In a nutshell, it is a 200-mile, 12-person team, 2-day (36 hour) relay race from Huntington Beach to San Diego by way of Lake Elsinore.  Each member runs 3 legs and each leg varies in distance between 2 and 10 miles.

I got on board with this back in October and have been diligently training since then.  I have never done any running like this before and never enjoyed long distance running.  I don't know that I have the running "bug" as right now it just feels like disciplined "doing".  I think we'll see how much I still want to run once this is all over.  However, this training gets me so close to running a half marathon, that I did decide to sign up for the OC (half) Marathon on May 5 - two weeks after the Ragnar.

My team is called Sweatin' with Strangers since really no one on our team knows each other.  We're a mish-mash of people that just wanted to get on a team.  I met the captain once and that is it.  The team will be piled into 2 vans - running, eating, and sleeping (?) together for nearly 36 hours.  I expect it to be interesting and full of fun.

If you are interested in details, I've got a whole bunch for you below.

I am running leg 5.  I put the routes into my MapMyRun program and it has this cool fly-over feature where you can see the route.  So for fun, here they are if you want to see where I will be huffin' and puffin'.  (The video links occasionally get errors, but keep trying it will eventually work.)

My first route is up Nohl Ranch Road in Orange,  It's 2.5 miles and the first half is straight UP!  I've run it twice to practice and it's a killer.  I will likely start this run around 8:30 am on Friday.
 



My second route is near Fallbrook, is 5.8 miles of mostly downhill.  I'm hoping it's not too steep, but it will be a nice contrast to the uphill.  This leg is estimated to begin around 8:00 pm.




My third is in Del Mar, is 4.5 miles and is up and down for a while before coming down to the ocean.  This leg should begin around 7:00 am on Saturday.



If you want to keep up to speed with anything, just let me know I'll see how it works to keep information flowing to those interested.

My mom has jumped on-board too by becoming a volunteer.  On Friday afternoon she'll be working the exchange where my first leg ends on Nohl Ranch Rd.