I got into a little more detail about my runs yesterday than I expected, so this will be more detail about the experience as a whole. I think it will be fun to write, re-living the event. Hopefully it will make for a fun read:

Thursday

We met in Hopkinton for a 6 o’clock (pm) departure. The team captain had both vans at his house, and by the time I got there almost everything had been loaded up. I had the last row in Van 2. We were a team of 11 - someone got hurt a few weeks ago, so we had to go one person short-handed. There were 6 people in Van 1, and 5 of us in Van 2. The last row was not great for bumps in the road but it was pretty good as far as a space to keep all my stuff.

We made one stop at a rest area on the way up - I had eaten a light dinner, so I wasn’t starved, but I got some Chex Mix to snack on. That proved valuable later on.

We stayed at a motel in Carroll, New Hampshire. This was strategically situated - for Van 1, it was a half hour from the start, and it was near where the 5 of us in Van 2 would begin our legs. (I’m realizing as I write this my New Hampshire geography is pretty bad. I might not get hat specific because I don’t want to say the wrong thing about where we were and when. But I think I have the basics.)

We checked in around 9:45pm. Van 1 had to be at the start line by 5am for a 5:45 start.

Friday

Everything went well for Van 1’s start. Van 2 didn’t have to check in until around 9:45am, so we met at 7:45, had a sit-down breakfast, and made it to our start area in plenty of time for us to get our bibs, use an actual bathroom (it would be a lot of porta-potties over a couple of days), and for me to look at the heights I would be running up to.

Van 1 met us and it all got very exciting very quickly since I had the first of our legs. I got the handoff and did my up and down the ski slope in 18 minutes and passed the timer to the next runner. Ragnar uses a timer embedded in a slap bracelet, which we hand off each time we run.

The way it works is now Van 1 had a couple of hours (well, more than that, since my next leg alone was a couple of hours) to recuperate, and we had our legs to run.

At mile 6 of leg 2, just about to get a water refill from my teammates.

There was a 5-miler and a 2.5-miler before it was my turn again for my run up the mountain. Some of the runs have van support - like I saw my teammates at miles 3 and 6 as I mentioned yesterday - but some don’t. I feel like this first time through we just went ahead to the next stop most of the time.

I ate a lot this weekend. It was good fueling before the runs, and in some cases post-run refreshment. Some of the guys in my van were really craving salty snacks when they were done - they had potato chips. I don’t usually do that, but I remembered I had the leftover Chex Mix, and I did enjoy that after my 10-miler.

At the last leg we met up again with Van 1 because they were ready to take over and by 4:30pm or so they were on their way and we had until around midnight before we ran again.

We went to a place called Basecamp Brewing in Lincoln, which was on the way to our next start destination, which I think was in Woodstock.

When we got to Woodstock, where we would transition between vans, we found a parking spot where we would try to get some sleep. When it’s just one van there are smaller parking lots because you’re not there too terribly long - you show up, wait for your runner, and then you’re on your way. (This made it tough to do my usual post-run routine. I like to stop sweating, have a Muscle Milk, do some stretching - but we had to get right in the van and get to the next stop. Usually by the time we got there I’d have more time…but I never quite got used to getting right into a van after a run. I spilled one Muscle Milk after that 10-miler because I wasn’t ready to get going so quick. On the other hand, I did get very good at changing clothes in the back of the van.)

But for the bigger transitions, where each team had two vans in the same place at some point, they use bigger spaces with bigger parking lots. State park campgrounds, big schools…the ski area I mentioned earlier - those were all places where there were a lot of people at once. (I think there were more than 350 teams, which means anywhere from 2,500 to 4,000 runners, depending on the size of teams. Everything was staggered - groups started their runs throughout the day on Friday - but there were still a lot of vans at changeovers.)

Sleep time, aka tossing and turning in the last row of a van for three hours.

Anyway, I think it was a school where we would be picking up at midnight. We were parked by 8pm. My four van teammates tried sleeping outside - many of them had never tried that before at the race. I tried to get comfortable in the van and could barely do so. I rested for a while, but I never fell asleep. During the day, being in the last row, I had a lot of room to stretch my legs and not have to sit the way I do that bothers my legs on long car rides. But that didn't equal a relaxing night. If I do this again I might consider sleeping outside.

I finally gave up in the 11 o’clock hour, and gave some nighttime walking around a go. It was the first opportunity to wear my reflective vest, and I went to use a porta-potty in the dark. I was pleasantly surprised to find the interior had a little light.

By midnight everyone was stirring and we soon got word the other van was around and our turn would have to get moving soon. Due to the uneven number of runners they were actually doing this first leg, and then I would pick up at the next stop. So we watched the runner go off, and then waited for her 6 miles away.

Overnight running, and my night running gear.

I think it was 1:15 by the time I got the bracelet. The combination of the weather plus the fact that I wasn’t running up a mountain outweighed my lack of sleep - I ran 4 miles, none of them more than 9:37/mile. It was cold, but not freezing - I wore a long sleeve t-shirt, and mostly it felt fine, and occasionally there was a cold breeze where it felt too cold for a regular t-shirt so I was happy with my dressing choice. It was a nice run.

The neon vest and the headlamp and the reflective vest all felt fine while I was running. The headlamp band got very sweaty. It was nice to get my night run out of the way but then came a lot of waiting for everyone else. We hit a slow down overnight and ended up being more than an hour behind schedule for our next changeover.

This was at a campground where historically firefighters from Allenstown have cooked a breakfast for runners as a fundraiser. When we got there we got pretty much their last dishes of food and some bad coffee, so we went to a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts on our way to the next changeover.

This was at about 7:30 in the morning, and by 8am we were at the next high school where we’d meet up for the last changeover, which would happen around 1pm.

The legs at this point are shorter, so things kind of moved faster, but we had a relaxing few hours. For $5 at this stop (benefiting some of the high school teams, the way I understood it), you could use the locker rooms, so I paid $5 to use an indoor bathroom and I didn’t shower but I did thoroughly wash up at the sink and brushed my teeth and changed into my last running outfit.

Among the van decorations, a way to tally our legs.

I laid down on a picnic table bench in the shade which shouldn’t have been comfortable but it really was, and then later sat in the van and dozed off for a bit.

Everyone ran a really strong last leg. I went out at around 3:30, and after I was done there were 3 legs to go.

Our last runner was the team captain, and we went ahead to meet the other team at Hampton Beach. The teams all meet their last runner on the beach 100 meters or so from the finish line and then run through the finish together.

All told we ran 204 miles from Lancaster, New Hampshire, to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.

You can see me with my medal above.

The cool thing about Ragnar that I didn’t know is that you can put an entire team’s medals together and spell out a message.

I thought that was a cool thing, since this is such a team effort.

We were obviously missing one because we were 11 instead of 12, but you can see in that image we should probably have slid those bottom medals a little bit left.

That’s OK. It’s imperfect, not unlike our journey to 200 miles.

I kind of like that.