Ragnar Relay 2012

   This was my 2nd year in a row running in the Ragnar Madison to Chicago 200 mile relay race. (Last year's post)  Last year, we decided, wasn't quite hard enough, so instead of spreading the 200 miles out 12 ways,  we built a team of 8 guys to tackle it (Not, sure, about, the, com,mas in, that sentence).  Also, as a way to make it even more difficult, we did 10 pushups at every runner exchange (36 in all) throughout the course.  This race is unlike other races because everybody starts at different times based on their expected total finish time.  That way they don't need to keep the finish line open for 2 days.  Ideally, they want everybody to finish within a few hours of each other.  Start times range from 6am to 3pm with the bulk of the teams starting from 6-11am.  We started right in the middle of the pack with a 8:30am start time.

  I started our team off by running the first 2 legs.  The first leg was 4.4 miles around Lake Monona to get us out of Madison.

  The team was waiting for me at the first exchange where we all dropped and did our first 10 pushups before I headed out to run the 2nd leg of 4.5 miles.

   Here I am after I finished the first 8.9 miles.  I ran at just over an 8 min/mile pace and finished around 9:40 am.  It heated up fast.  Highs were in the 90s and most of the course early on didn't have shade.

Jodi had the hardest run of the whole trip.  He destroyed an 11 mile run that he started around 1pm on a country highway with rolling hills and no shade.  This run won him team MVP honors.  Because he had this strong run early on, it set our team up for a chance to get to the finish line first.

 Here is Rick updating our "Kills" on the side of the van.  Every time we passed another team, we marked it down.  Eventually we ran out of room.  We loved the looks that this prompted at stoplights.

Quick photo of 7/8ths of the team at one of the exchanges.

  The other teams LOVED watching this.  We got big cheers when we dropped down to knock out 10 pushups.  Towards the end, some other people even joined in with us.

Marlaina and Gretchen helped out by volunteering at the exchange in Waukesha.

  No breaks.  We did so many pushups that I think we'd all agree that we got to a point where our arms and chests were more sore than our legs.

You never know what you'll see out there.

  Geared up for the first of my 2 night runs.  This was around 9 pm.  I ran legs 17 and 18 for a total of 6.9 miles along the Root River Parkway and ended at Southridge Mall.  I averaged around an 8:20 min/mile pace for this run.

  My 3rd run was 4.6 miles at 2:30am in Racine.  I ran along Lake Michigan and then headed through some slummy areas as the bars were letting out.  Got to see some crazy people.  Not a huge fan of Racine at night.  Also, had a bad experience.  Because I was so afraid of getting dehydrated from the extreme heat.  I (along with most of the guys) drank WAY too much water and gatorade during the day.  I felt so heavy that I had a hard time getting my breaths in.  That's okay.  I found that throwing up behind a dumpster among drunks leaving the bars made me feel much better.  I averaged a 8:50 min/mile pace for this run.



  My 4th and final run was a 4.8 mile run along a bike path on the North side of Chicago.  We had such a strong first day and night that we were in a position to get to the finish line first.  We had passed every team in front of us at this point and nobody behind us had caught us.  There were 2 other teams that we were battling back and forth with.  My run started with us 6 minutes behind the team in front of us.  There was a mixup with some of the signs so I wasn't sure where to go and fortunately, neither did the guy in front of us.  I ran into him off the course as we were both trying to find out where to go.  We found one of the race directors and she directed us where to go by driving ahead of us and pointing us onto the bike path.  Lucky for us, that guy didn't have much in the tank at this point.  I averaged 7:45 and did my best to leave him in the dust.

 We did it!  Tom (shirt off) came down the path and we joined him to become the first team to cross the finish line!  A lot of the sponsors took pictures of us with their products and Ragnar said they were going to put our pictures up on the website.

 Last set of pushups.  It added up to 360 per person during the race!  By the end of the race, we became known as "The Pushup Guys".  I think that would make a great team name for next year :)

 Our 8 man team:

Rick, Jake, Me, Tom, Tim, Marcus, Jodi and Matt B.  (They told us to put up #1 for this picture.)

Final results:

14th place in the Open Men category with a time of 26:57:30 - with just 8 guys.

34th place overall out of 422 teams ?!?  It's hard not to think what our time could've been if we wouldn't have stopped at every exchange to do pushups.  Definitely worth it though.

I burned almost 3800 calories over my 4 runs totaling over 25 miles.

And, we got to cross the finish line first and receive the accolades that came with it.

Amazing time with an amazing group of guys.  Can't wait to go for it again next year!