Ragnar Northwest Passage ULTRA Style

I could write an entire book about this relay and at the same time I could sum it all up in just a few sentences.

Before it all began!

Here's the short version:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  Yes, it was the WORST of times.

Here's the long version:
Without completely and utterly embarrassing myself (too late for that?), let's just say I suffered incredible intestinal distress such that I've never experienced while racing before.  I've been a complete arrogant snob - my gut has always been a "rock", and that was something that happened to other racers.  Well let's just say, I will never ever again relay without carrying Imodium.  That stuff is magic.

My happiest moment: before the running and distress began!

While this was my 3rd Ragnar and 6th relay (well, 7th if you count Mt. Si but that's not the same), I've never done one ultra style before (ran with 6 runners instead of 12).  And, I'm not sure I will again.  Let me be clear, I am incredibly proud of myself for finishing and for accomplishing this.  I'm so glad I did it and I'm happy to cross it off my bucket list.  But let me also be clear, this was probably the hardest race I've ever completed.  It was hard physically (oh the hills, the hills, hills, hills, everywhere) and it was sure hard mentally, and didn't I already mention I thought I was actually dying during it?  Like Robyn sneezed and I couldn't muster the energy to tell her 'Bless You' even though I wanted to.  That's how bad it was.  Like I was googling hotels in the area and Marilyn said 'Maybe her husband should come pick her up'.  THAT'S how bad it was.  So maybe you weren't clear about that.

But here's the lowdown of the race itself.  I got to hang out with 5 amazing ladies and one truly amazing driver (Marilyn's husband is AWESOME).  I loved each of these ladies and I'm so glad I got to know them more.

In order of legs, Robyn, Lauren, Marilyn, moi, Jordanne, Bethany.

These women are hard core, never give up, funny, kind, inspirational, generous... they are the kind of ladies one would be lucky to call friends.  I'm so lucky I got to annoy them for 48 hours!

 Reppin' Nuun!

We decided to divvy up the miles in a more "interesting" way than the typical 3 vs 6 leg conundrum, to avoid one person being stuck with an 18 mile middle-of-the-night leg, so we split them unconventionally across 4 legs for each person.  Sometimes we ran 1 leg at a time, sometimes 2, and lucky me once got to run 3 legs at a time.  So here they were:

1st Leg: Legs 7 & 8
9.67 miles  10:38 average  1:42:58   elevation gain: 807 feet (yes you read that right)
Friday, 2:48pm
Splits: 9:41, 9:15, 9:39, 10:06, 9:42, 12:07, 13:25, 12:14, 10:07, 9:49

They said this was the hardest leg of the entire course.  Too bad I didn't realize I had to climb a mountain until the week before.  It was DIFFICULT to say the least.  Steep and unrelenting and HOT in the middle of the afternoon.  It was pretty though - on gravel trails through forests and along a lake. 

A few miles is was when I started to worry about how my stomach was feeling.  Another mile or two and I was panicked and looking off into the bushes.  Luckily there was a bathroom at this lake park in the middle, I don't even want to think about what would have happened if that oasis hadn't magically appeared.  I majorly struggled through the rest of the leg.  The mile splits tell the story. 

I've never been so happy to hand off that bracelet!

Then I proceeded to die in the car for a few hours.  Like seriously, it was terrible and not pretty.  We saw Lindsay and the Nuun team at the exchange and I couldn't even go hang out with them, that's how bad it was.  Until Robyn had the genius idea to ask the first aid tent at the major exchange for Imodium.  And man that worked IMMEDIATELY!  Seriously, it was magic.  You could tell I felt better when I finally laughed (once! ha) and took a few tiny bites of my sandwich.  I wasn't 100% but it was 10,000% better than it was before. 

2nd Leg: Leg 18
5.55 miles  9:58 average  55:23  elevation gain: 26 feet (yes you read that right!)
Saturday, 12:13am
Splits: 9:45, 9:41, 9:58, 10:02, 10:10, 10:19

 

I felt much better during this leg and didn't need a bathroom.  Win!  Also it was cooler and flat as a pancake, so that certainly helped.  This was the closest to running on a treadmill as I would EVER thought was possible.  Who even knew such a flat road even existed?!

3rd Leg: Legs 25, 26, & 27
8.68 miles  12:09 average  1:45:36   elevation gain: 597 feet
Saturday, 7:38am
Splits: 10:25, 12:33, 10:42, 12:44, 12:35, 12:09, 12:57, 13:05, 12:18

Here's where I made a mistake of not preempting the bathroom issues by taking another Imodium.  Man I wish I had, because the intestinal issues were back, as were the relentless and difficult hills.  I was really hoping my team would come by so I could get that magic pill from them but they were off at Starbucks.  Luckily I ran through not one but two exchanges and I used the port-a-potties at each.  Once again, those splits tell the story.  It makes me cringe just looking at them. 

 

My nice teammates were making fun of my outfit.

4th Leg: Leg #34
5.69 miles  9:38 average  54:54   elevation gain: 476 feet
Saturday, 2:54pm
Splits: 11:05, 9:02, 10:06, 8:25, 9:51, 9:12

And NOW the going gets good!  I was just about writing off relays FOREVER.  I was begging others to take that leg.  Thank goodness Robyn and Bethany and everyone else told me to SUCK IT UP LADY and stop being a baby and just finish this thing, because this was easily the best hour of the whole entire race.  Again, look at the splits!  This was still a hilly leg - and yet there's an 8:25 in there and a bunch of 9's!  I felt amazing, I felt like me, THIS is the Ricole that comes to relays, not that girl I didn't even recognize from before.  Who was that?!?!

This was exactly my favorite kind of run - on rolling hills (hills are okay as long as you actually get to run down them!) through beautiful countryside with animals (I saw a deer and her baby!) on backcountry quiet roads on a coastal island.  Seriously, does it get any better than this?  And I was truckin'.  I still powerwalked the huge hills but now I FLEW down the downhills.  I picked out people to pass like "come here little one" and passed 8 people one-by-one.  THIS WAS ME.  It was a wonderful way to end the relay after such horribleness. 

Isn't running wonderful?!?!  I yelled this to my teammates during this run and they all thought I was being majorly sarcastic after all of my complaints but I wasn't!

In all it was 29.6 miles of running, 1,906 feet of elevation gain (YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT), and 5 hours and 19 minutes of running.  WHEW! 

I was too grouchy to cross off any of my legs until after I finally had a good one.  

All done!  32 hours and 17 minutes later... and cheersing with some pizza, and later with some DQ.

THANK YOU AWESOME TEAMMATES & DRIVER!

And thanks in advance to my husband for not holding all of my sad sick texts against me the next time I want to relay...

And that's a wrap!  Let's hope Hood to Coast is a little more friendly...

REJECTED.

If you've read about anything round these parts, it's Hood to Coast.  It is THE race of my year.  Even when I first became a runner long long ago in 2008, I KNEW that I wanted to do Hood to Coast.

So I put in an application.
But in 2009, it was not meant to be.  REJECTED.  

So for 2010, I tried again.  You get to go in a "special" lottery if you've been declined the year before, so we supposedly had much better odds.  And SUCCESS!  We were in!

 Van 1 is the best, by the way. 

And it. Was. AWESOME.  It did NOT disappoint.  Hanging out with my favorite people in a sweaty van all weekend is truly the best.

So after one of the best weekends, ever, we were understandably greedy for more.  So we applied again for 2011.  And to my very pleased surprise we were ACCEPTED again!  Even without the special lottery.

In 2011 the extreme heat and extreme traffic issues put a little damper on our fun, but we still had a blast.  And of course, we wanted more. 
So we applied for 2012.  But, like 2009, it was not meant to be.  REJECTED. 

Lucky for me, Nuun was accepting applications for their 3 awesome teams, and I got picked!  And I had THE TIME OF MY LIFE running with them in 2012.  Thank you again Nuun.  But my poor teammates didn't get that experience.

 Van 1 Team Morning Rockstars

So of course, we applied again, in that special lottery for those who are rejected, for 2013.  But this time, the special lottery didn't hold any specialness for us.
Because the word just came, that for 2013 we are  REJECTED.
 
And I am disappointed.  That's for sure.  I feel a little like we got a bit screwed by all the people last year who earned a guaranteed entry through their brand new rule: that if you finish within 30 minutes of your predicted time you get an automatic entry.  I heard that an estimated 350 teams (out of only 1,050) got guaranteed entry through that method ALONE (there's other ways to earn it too).  You can bet if that'd have been a rule during 2010 or 2011 we would have gone to the EXTREMES to make that happen.  Which I'm sure a TON of teams did.  But that left way less spots for those that didn't have a team last year.

But oh well - what can you do?  Except apply again next year!  And start thinking up some Nuun Hood to Coast application ideas....!

Anyone have a team I can be on?  Or an idea for a different relay we should enter?  

Post Hood to Coast Festivities

It's hard to believe that in just under 29 hours we made it from here:

To here:

We made it!  It took 28 hours, 46 minutes, and 30 seconds - good enough for 6th place in the Corporate Women Division (for some reason the other 2 teams were in Women's Open and we were in Corporate Women).  Don't ask how many teams were in our division though... (only 9!).  WE STILL ROCKED!

Being in Van 1 is DEFINITELY the way to go, for a million different reasons.  You get to see the gorgeous mountain.  You usually have better running times / sleeping times though because of our late start I'm not sure that was the case this time.  You miss out on most of the traffic.  AND MOST IMPORTANTLY - you get to the beach party FIRST with time to shower and relax before you meet your team at the finish.

Since we were nearly the last team to finish, the beach party was already in full effect by the time we got there and was very busy. 

We had to stop by and say hi to the Nuunies!

We had a lovely gorgeous sunset going on

And then FINALLY our team was there!  Running on the sand when your quads are already starting to feel sore is not easy.  The run to the finish with our runner was more like a sad little shuffle of soreness. 

Then we were off to the Nike VIP tent (woot!) for some beers and BBQ and talk.  I didn't last long though - it was pretty chilly out and I was starting to get reeeaaaallllyyyyy tired.  Some of the young-ens headed out to the bar after - I headed to my warm cozy bed. 

And just like the end, the weekend I'd been looking forward to for MONTHS was over.  I feel a bit depressed.  I don't want the relay madness to end! 

The End.

Hood to Coast Leg #3 aka Leg #30

We're almost there!  You've almost made it to the end of my never-ending marathon posts about Hood to Coast!  Don't worry, persevere - you can do it. 

Where we last left off we had grabbed a bit of sleep at the last major exchange.  Some slept in the van on the way there - since I had just run I was still all hopped up on adrenaline and couldn't sleep.  Once we got there I opted to just sleep in the van - while some others slept in the field.  Since it was now daylight and quite hot by the time we woke up it was a bit difficult do simulate night! 

And finally it was morning - Team Morning's true time to shine!  :-)

Check out those awesome Tough Chik arm warmers - I wore mine on the night leg only since it was hot and sadly didn't get a picture. 

I've mentioned it before but I can't reiterate enough how I think starting so late (we started at 2:30pm) hindered our experience a bit.  I feel like we missed out on some of the "crazy" of Hood to Coast - the atmosphere - seeing all the costumes and crazy van decorations, etc.  The good thing was that we missed out on traffic, but we were literally less than 30 minutes ahead of the VERY LAST RUNNER.  We could hear them on their walkie talkies saying "Exchange 27 now closed" when we were only at Exchange 29!  That's not good.

Here, for example, is one of the exchanges, a freaking ghost town:

But I digress.  That was really the only negative thing of the whole weekend so how can you possibly complain?!?!?

And then it was time for me to run my 3rd and final leg!  Looking at the elevation map it looked like after I made it about halfway I was good to go - it was smooth sailing downhill to the finish.  So I kind of overlooked this leg and figured this would be my easiest leg by far. 

Nope. 

Ready to go!

Saturday, August 25, 2:00pm
Another jaunt down the road through the middle of nowhere this time.  The road was curving with no shoulder so it was a bit scary going around the blind spots because a car coming your way would easily hit you before they saw you. 

The scenery on this leg was GORGEOUS though.  Through the forest and pure loveliness. 

 

Again, I totally underestimated the difficulty of this leg.  Although it looks straight downhill, (and it was - very steep downhill for one mile that wrecked havoc on your quads) - it was still quite rolling after that so I was wrong to think it was only downhill to the finish.  Lots more hills to contend with!

Total Distance: 5.3 miles   Total Time: 40:21   Average Pace: 7:37
Splits: 8:05, 7:48, 7:31, 7:25, 7:25, 6:51 (.3)

Total elevation gain of 162 feet, total loss of 667 feet

Look at all those 7's!  This time I mixed it up by passing 2 people but only getting passed by 1 person (probably because Molly was already ahead of me and didn't get a chance to pass me for a 3rd time!).  So to recap, the ENTIRE race of 17 miles I only passed 6 people and got passed by 5 (2 of those 5 being Molly).  Again - you were ALONE when you were running. 

But I was so thankful while I was out there to BE out there - to be running Hood to Coast, to be running with this fabulous group of women, to be running with this amazing company.  I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

But then I was done!  And that meant the WHOLE TEAM was done!  YIPPEE!  We had survived! 

We're finally all done!

I loved my van so much - they were the best group of girls and best driver in the world.  I'm so lucky I got to hang out with them in a sweaty van for 30+ hours! 

Come back tomorrow for the final epic conclusion - the beach party!

Hood to Coast Leg #2 aka Leg #18

After I finished my first leg we headed off to Portland to find dinner with Team Noon (Team Brunch strikes again!).  We found the most generically named restaurant ever: "The Portland Sports Bar & Grill".  Seriously?  That's the best name you could come up with?

I had a BBQ chicken wrap and it was just okay.  The chicken was dry and the pita bread was pretty dry too.  Some of the other girls got tater-tots and I was pretty envious of their choices. 

After killing a bunch of time at the restaurant (service is always slow when you're trying to feed 14 people it seems!), we headed off to the next van exchange - a bit of a sketchy area under the bridge.  Beautiful views of the city lights though:

And then we were off and running again!  Once again, being the last to go makes it rough - both in anticipation, and in staying awake, and in knowing what to eat.  It'd been a good 5 hours or more since we ate dinner by the time I actually ran, so it's difficult to decide what's safe to eat.

We settled on some peanut butter, more dried mangoes (get those away from me!), and I gave myself a glute massage with more Bengay.  Totally normal for 3 in the morning.  Things got a little bit delirious somewhere in here...

Until finally, FINALLY, it was my turn to go. 

Saturday, August 25, 4:29am
I was hoping we would somehow get a bit more behind so I would be running when the sun came up, but no dice.  It was just starting to get a teeny tiny bit light as we drove away from the exchange AFTER I finished. 

My run was a pretty pointless circle around West St. Helens - I guess they felt they needed to add some mileage so sadly I didn't help us much in getting to Seaside.  Kind of like Ragnar. 

This was to be my hardest leg and it was hard all right.  It was steady uphill the whole time, but mostly in the last 1.5 miles or so was when I really struggled.  In the last mile a very strong headwind added to the uphill, it was partially on gravel, and it was DARK. 

There were times when I definitely wasn't sure where to go, because again, since we started so late, we were around NO ONE.  I had an identical leg as my first, passing 2 people and getting passed by 2 (Molly passed me AGAIN!). 

It was seriously pitch black in places and I wished I'd carried more light.  I just had my headlamp on and it wasn't enough.  There was also an intersection that I wasn't sure where to go where again there was no volunteer nor a sign, and no one in front of me leading the way.  I did NOT like that.  We need signs people! 

Total Distance: 5.27 miles   Total Time: 44:04   Average Pace: 8:22
Splits: 8:08, 8:12, 8:08, 8:21, 8:53, 8:37 (.27)

Total elevation gain: 214 feet

No 7's this time.  I was just happy to keep moving despite the hills, headwind, gravel, and darkness.  I was so happy to be done with this leg! 

And finally FINALLY it was time to try to sleep for a bit.  But of course first we had to wind our way on the most curving road ever in the middle of the night to get there.  Jay is a rockstar and got us there safely.  THANK YOU JAY! 

And we like to fake brush our teeth in the middle of the night.  We're cool!

Leg #2 aka Leg #18 done - only one leg left to go!

Hood to Coast Leg #1 aka Leg #6

For some reason I am having a terrible time recapping this race.  I don't know why.  It's never happened to me before. The weekend was so awesome and I met so many fabulous people and had fun running 17 miles and it's like too many things happened to even put into words.  I'm having a serious case of writer's block, people.  But, the race started nearly a week ago already, and it's freaking time I got it documented and sadly, moved on with my life.  I guess.  If I have to.

So maybe we'll go with mostly a "story of pictures"?  Whatd'ya say?

On Friday morning our late start (more on that later) granted us a luxurious wake-up call of 7am.  We loaded up the vans and were off to Oregon!  In case you're confused, our group team name is "Afternuun Delight" but each of the 3 teams were further designated into "Team Morning" (us!), "Team Noon", and "Team Night".

Since we love food though, "Team Morning" quickly became "Team Breakfast":

And since "Team Morning" Van 1 and "Team Noon" Van 1 seemed to be together nearly the entire race (that was a blast - so glad it worked out that way!) - our conglomerate quickly became "Team Brunch". Yeah, we're clever.

Team Brunch at the end of the race

After a few hours in the van (the first of MANY), we finally got a glimpse of that oh-so-glorious mountain: Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood. 

Isn't it lovely?  Shouldn't this be a magazine cover?  Don't you love our Team Sparkle skirts?!

My awesome van: Corey, Jess, Tricia, Stephanie, & Nuunie Caitlin

Tricia started getting ready for her first leg and the rest of us started getting ready for the whole race with our Nuun tattoos (the most important part of course!):

Corey rocking the tattoo application

We also made it our mission to Nuun-tattoo as many people as possible, and taking some notes from The Amazing Race the day before - aimed for as many "odd" looking people as possible.  Good strategy, right?

Being the last leg of your van definitely has it's disadvantages.  On this first leg I was ITCHING to run.  I was seriously dying of jealousy every time another teammate took off.  It was killing me to wait all that time, but finally, FINALLY, Molly and I (my leg 6 counterpart on Team Noon) took to the starting blocks corral. 

Friday, August 24, 6:20pm - Just late enough to have to wear the reflective vests / headlamps / LED flashers even though it was broad daylight.

And we were off!  Molly is ragingly fast and passed me within the first 10 seconds of the race.  Two people passed me and I passed two people for a sad net gain of 0 (but we don't worry about net, only gross matters, right?!). 

We had a nice jaunt down the highway that led into Sandy, Oregon, where the first major exchange was waiting there at the Safeway parking lot.  This was to be my longest leg, which I was very happy to get done with first, however I was pretty nervous going in because my glute acts up on 6 mile runs, so how was it going to react to not 1, not 2, but THREE 6 mile runs???!!!

Surprisingly it seemed to do okay.  It was hot out (high 70's) in the blazing direct sun and I was at max effort, so the main concern was my heart rate / breathing the entire time - so that was plenty to think about.

Total Distance: 6.71 miles   Total Time: 52:24   Average Pace: 7:49
Splits: 8:06, 7:47, 8:05, 8:00, 7:37, 7:35, 7:20

Look at all those 7's!  Yeah yeah yeah, the downhill:

Total elevation gain of 165 feet, 526 feet of loss

The route was net downhill by a decent amount, with some rolling hills that are difficult to see in the elevation map since the scale is so large.  But you can likely see that the first mile was warm-up, second mile downhill, 3rd and 4th miles slight uphill, and last 3 miles downhill. 

I was all alone for the last 3 miles - could not see a single runner in sight in front of or behind me, and that was very unnerving because there were NO signs and NO volunteers directing me where to go (or confirming I was on the right track!).  Once I got into Sandy there were a few annoying stoplights and I got to run past a bunch of people eating at bars outside who all cheered for me - which was funny.

And before I knew it - I was sprinting into the exchange:

And then I handed off to Erin on Van 2 and we were all done with our first set of legs!  I immediately walked as much as I could before we left and stretched my glute / hamstring out - which was the story of the whole trip.  I rolled it with the lacrosse ball a bit too, and used Bengay a few times, and it seemed to keep the problem under control.  I'm on a break now from running though - in case you wanted a bit of a spoiler alert!

And that was my 1st leg / Leg #6 of Hood to Coast!  Next up: dinner and my 2nd leg - the night one!