Colorado Ragnar 2012

I had the opportunity to run another Ragnar in September and it was a little different than my first Ragnar since I actually knew a bunch of the people I was running with this time :) . . . all 12 of us traveled together to Colorado for the race.  I was in van Juan ;) and we had an absolute blast! We were all a bit ridiculous and the only thing that could have made it better would have been to have Jason there with me (I'm doing my darndest to get him into running - I would LOVE to run races like this with him!!!  Oh, the dream, especially if they do a Ragnar Kauai- sign us up!!) 

The race was a great break from all the stresses of life right now and I am very thankful to my family for watching the kids while I went.  I felt a little selfish spending money on myself to run a race, but I am grateful I was able to do it since it was such a fun, fulfilling experience!

(A few weeks before the race, one of the runners in my van needed to switch legs with someone else because of a couple injuries he was dealing with; his legs equaled 19.1 miles. I had been running a lot in the weeks before the race so since my legs were not as difficult and only totaled 13.4 miles I offered to switch with him and do the 19.1 :)  It was awesome and I'm thrilled I switched.  I love a good challenge . . . especially 7.3 miles uphill, 8.8 miles at 2 a.m., and 3.0 in the sun.)

At the river right by our hotel - gorgeous!

The Start Line

I was given the name of Hacksaw because of a little incident involving a BYU game and a tree that was blocking my satellite, so someone thought this was funny ;) haha

Jason Theler hadn't been feeling very good, but was mostly dealing with congestion and sinus junk, so we decided to fake like it was more than that and we sent this picture to the other van. It was pretty funny.

We were all supposed to do a silly pose, but I definitely look the most ridiculous!

Ummm, Raylene did it too ;)

This was the end of my first run, which was 7.3 miles uphill.  It was a difficult run, but was also one of the most gorgeous runs I could have ever asked for . . . and I felt pretty good when I was done - Yay!

I don't have any pictures of our night runs, but my run was 8.8 miles at 2 in the morning and at one point along the trail there was this creepy guy, with full dreadlocks and a backpack just walking along the trail with no flashlight.  It was spooky! Thank heavens my van had been following me on the road that paralleled the trail and when they saw the man, they pulled over and waited until I was far enough away from him that there was no danger. Yikes!  I kept thinking about what I would do if the guy tried anything and let me tell you, he would have wished he never messed with this chick!!! Kapow!

Getting ready for the early morning runs - it was super cold!!

All four of us ran the Wasatch Back and Colorado Ragnar in the same year so we received the Mile High Medals - Yippee! 

We stayed at Jaime Theler's brother's house the night that we finished the race and it was wonderful!  The next morning we attended Sacrament Meeting and then headed back home.

When we were passing through Wellington, our van started making a weird clunking sound so we pulled into a Church parking lot and Jason and Ryan discovered that the bearings were completely shot.  We tried to get help and a nice man from the ward came out to help us but told us the car would have to be repaired another day because they would have to order a part.  Just then a really nice man, Jjon pulled into the parking lot with his truck and said, "you guys need to take my truck home don't you?"  He said he had felt prompted that someone needed his truck and when he saw us in the parking lot, he knew it was us. He ended up letting us drive the truck all the way back home and then a couple days later, Raylene and her husband brought it back to return to him.  It was pretty awesome how kind he was and we all made it home only a couple hours later than planned as a result. :)