Run, Drive, Sleep? Repeat

Yes that is Ragnar...run, drive, sleep? and repeat.

It's a physically exhausting, emotionally demanding, party with friends!

Ragnar says some call it a slumber party without sleep, pillows, or deodorant.

It is true and it really is FUN!
In fact, with five races under my belt, I think it's the only way to go.

Our team (called 2 Hot 2 Trot...So We Run) of 12 fantastic women met periodically over the summer to coordinate details and on Saturday mornings for training runs.  They are a fun group of women that I'm so glad I got to spend so much time with.  We met on Thursday night for a delicious carb-loading dinner and to pack up our vans.

We decorated the vans with our names and cute running girls,thank goodness Shannon was a great artist.  Our team captain, Becca proved to be a woman with much wisdom many times, including right from the start bringing a humongous bag for stinky clothes!!

One final picture before we began our journey of sweat and stink.

Next we drove to the Bay area and tried to sleep.  The six girls in van one got up at 4:00 am to head for the start line at the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco.  I was in van 2, so we stayed and tried to sleep a little more before eating breakfast and heading out to meet them at the first exchange.  

Here are the girls from my van waiting to start our next several hours of running.

Reason #5,238 why Ragnar is such a great set-up...tons of cheering and support.  

Here we are "tunneling" to welcome in runner #6.  Way to go Katherine!

And a little more love...

A lot of goofing off and laughing in between those exchanges...

Here I am finishing my first leg.  It was my hardest in elevation, but fastest time.

And a lot of beautiful hillsides...

After our first legs were done, we grabbed some Subway sandwiches and headed to our hotel in Santa Rosa.  Everyone got a hot shower, and we lounged around and gave our legs some rest and geared up for our middle of the night runs.  One of the girls in our van, Mandi's husband, Trevor volunteered to come along as our pacer.  Really he was more like a "protector"...you know fighting off any wild dogs and bad guys!  We totally appreciated the 15 miles he ran in the middle of the night.  Although I am not sure what happened to his nose or why he is bleeding (sure it had nothing to do with when I almost jumped on his back because of some crazy dogs!!!), but it does make him look tough and brave!

At about 4:30 a.m. we finished our second legs and went back to the hotel to try to get a little sleep.  I was thrilled with two hours.  We grabbed a quick breakfast sandwich at Starbucks and headed to begin our last stretch of running.  Here's my cute friend, Shannon encouraging me right before hand, she ran the last mile with me too.

I ran a total of 16.4 miles, but for sure this leg of mine was my hardest.  It was 7.9 miles on a no-shade stretch in the heat of the mid-day.
I kept replaying in my mind the quote (I had found the week before and is so true with many things including running distances), "that which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the nature of the task has changed, but that our ability to do it has increased" by Spencer W. Kimball. 

Napa Valley is beautiful this time of year, the grapes were in full harvest.

As we waited for our last team members, we (bathed with wet-wipes and) changed into our team shirts and knee-high socks.   Believe me, wool never felt so hot!

We could feel it, we were close to the finish!!!

Then as a team, we greeted our last runner and crossed the finish line together!!

What a thrill!!

Van one girls rocked it!

 Of course van two girls did too!!!

2 Hot 2 Trot...until next time!

It was wonderful to come home to my sweet family and their support and encouragement.
They had made this banner for the back of my van and decorated the garage with "Our Mom Rocks"!
I'm pretty sure it's my family that ROCKS, how blessed I am!