Season 4 of Ragnar was awesome. I think my favorite year so far. I love being part of the Housewives of the UC team (like us on our facebook page). We have fun, we run hard and most of all we all get along great.
As always the party starts the night before with van decorating. We had lots of fancy pictures on magnets for our vans this year which made decorating and clean up faster. I love how pro we're getting :)
Our start time was 8:45 am - so we met at 5:30 am and were on the road at 5:45. We got there with the perfect amount of time to go through the safety briefing and relax a few minutes before the start. Since I was runner 1 this year I got to do the starting line.
On the ride up to Logan (about 2 hours) the girls were looking at the pace calculator sheet that I brought and were getting on my case because I changed a few of their times without asking. You are supposed to use your 10K race pace and I know some of the girls are faster than they said.....so I took the liberty of changing it :)
I was taking some serious heat - but luckily I can hold my own. Ha. Anyway I had put that my pace would be 8:00 (which I actually think I will beat next week in my 10K....so stay tuned). My first leg was tough with some good uphill and some trail in the first few miles. So when I finished I was sure I was way off my time. I finished my first leg of 7.7 miles at an 8:17 pace in 1:03:37 - my estimated time was supposed to be 1:03 so I guess I was right on target.
For our first legs I managed to go opposite of these 2 beauties.
At the first major exchange right after van 2 left someone came up to me and asked how far into the race we were when I told him we were van 1 and had just finished our first legs he asked if we wanted some water for our van. He gave us a big old box of pop-top water bottles. Of course I got a little silly and said "wow, you're our first sponsor" - he thought I was full-blown crazy but he still gave us the water. We had some fun posting our "sponsor" on Instagram.
Right before my 2nd leg we had a delicious picnic lunch and rested up at Snowbasin. Could our matching pink blankets be any cuter? I have no pictures of my 2nd leg but it was 8.2 with most of it being a very steep downhill. I ran it at a 7:44 pace and because of traffic the van finally caught me and passed me with less than a mile to go.
Heather made these pretty signs for us to use at the exchanges and then my brother Steve added LED lights to them for the night. They were so awesome and made it so easy to find each other.
My bubble face that was on the side of the van.....and then my team threw me under the van at the end!
After our van finished we went to Kneaders for breakfast and big old diet coke. It was heaven. Then we changed into our finish line outfits, organized and cleaned the van and then headed over to the finish area.
Van 2 kicked serious butt and we finished in 30:51. In women's submasters we were 5/23. Overall women's 11/101 and overall 256/1390. We were 2 hours faster this year than last year with almost the exact same team. We all trained hard and raced hard and even though it's not about our time or place it feels great to do so well.
Our sweet Higgy was runner #9 and she had some seriously hard legs to run. Her 2nd leg was over 11 miles during the middle of the night (3:00 am) and she got really sick and dehydrated. She finished that leg and still ran her last leg which was 4.4 miles straight up the steepest mountain in the course. She is AMAZING!! She was so sick by the end she couldn't get out of the van to cross the finish line with us. She is a serious rock star!
I love my team and I can't wait to see what 2014 brings!
