Southern California Ragnar 2010

This last weekend was the Ragnar Relay in Southern California. Last year I went down to support some friends who were running this race, but this year, I decided to give it a go myself. And when I say "myself", I mean with eleven other people. We were Team Red Pants, which is appropriate since the race started on Red Pants Friday, right? Right.

Here is a photo of our team right before the race started. Apparently two of our teammates didn't get the Team Red Pants memo. ...

But some of us did.

I love this photo so much. I think it could almost be a caption contest. I just imagine Scott saying to Mark "Wear your red pants and be free!" or something close to that.

Jen bought some red sweats at Wal-Mart and the smallest size they had was Men's 3X. Mark was a little chilly, so he hopped right into Jen's pants. Yep, you read that correctly.

That photo was obviously taken before I had run my first leg. Then imagine a lot of photos that could look like this. My first leg was 4.7 miles in Woodland Hills at 9pm and I was doing pretty well. Most of you know that I'm a fairly slow runner, so when I had people passing me, I decided to run faster. "I can move my legs faster" I thought. Well, duh. I can. I also learned a valuable lesson. When I exert myself too much, I also lose everything I've eaten that day. Not a fun lesson to learn...or pretty. But I felt fine afterward, so I kept on running.

I was runner 12, so after I was done, we drove to the Santa Monica Pier parking lot where we ate a little dinner and then slept for about 2 hours in our van while the other half of our team continued the relay through Van Nuys, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. Please keep in mind that this was all through the night. Our 6th runner started running down Venice Beach at 2am so that by the time my leg rolled around again, it was around 5:45am. And as soon as some of our stiff competition passed me close to the finish line, I lost my dinner again. This has never happened to me before, so I'm guessing it was just because of exertion and stress. Good times.

Here we are as a team at the finish line at about 4:30pm in Dana Point. Yep, on the beach. And it was beautiful. Couldn't have asked for better weather.

From left to right we have:

Veronica, Tracy, January, Ashley Mark, Jen, Brittany Me, Colleen,John, Scott, Amy.

And since we were with Scott, we had to have a pyramid.

And just some of my favorite shots of the vans that we lived in for 31+ hours:

What a hard race. My last 6 miles was the longest 6 miles of my life. And I've run a marathon. My body wasn't shutting down like it did in the marathon, but I was way more tired and since I had been throwing up so much, I hadn't eaten anything before my last leg. Yeah. Good times. 2 hours of sleep in over a day and I'd already run about 7 miles with nothing in my stomach to fuel me.

Thanks to everyone who ran on our team, most of all. And thanks to everyone who sent me texts of support along the way. I was grateful for the love I felt every step of the way.

May we remember Team Red Pants forever in our hearts. :)

And in case you're wondering if I'd do it again, I'm already thinking about signing up for 2 more this year. Yep.