Wyld Walkers

Yesterday I finished the Wasatch Back Ragnar for my second time. Unlike when I ran the Wasatch Back for the first time three years ago, this time I joined my team days before the race. A friend from my Master’s program had several people drop out of her team last minute and asked if I would join. But even more last minute than my joining the team, was my brother joining the team. When I met up with my van the night before the Ragnar to head up to Logan I found out that yet another person had dropped out. I contacted my little brother Mitchell and he was able to get work off and joined our team hours before we arrived at the starting line.

Considering my last minute joining of the team, my lack of training, and only knowing two people on the team–the race was a blast.

My total mileage for the race was longer than I have ran in a week since I trained for my marathon eight months ago. Two of my three legs were longer than I have run at one time since my marathon. Despite my lack of training I felt pretty good about how well I ran. My pace was fairly consistent through all of my legs, even through my last leg which was long and hilly.

Mitchell was a champ and passed more people than almost anyone on our team.

Our team was called “Wings of Mercury.” In honor of our team name we all wore wings for at least one of our legs.

The only hiccup came when we had to exchange with the other van. Somehow Mitchell always finished long before the next runner was ready.

There was also the typical Ragnar fun of running with all of the required safety gear in the dark.

As the race went on our exchanges got better and better within our van.

The people in our van were a lot of fun. We all got along well even when we were extremely sleep deprived.

Thanks for letting us run with you Wings of Mercury, it was a blast.