Oh, Ragnar.
For whatever reason, the running mojo hasnt been present for awhile. Between being super busy at work and some other stuff, I've just been in a rut where the act of running isn't very pleasant. As such, I was much more 'along for the ride' for this one to support my teammates on team "Forking With Friends" (the epic sequel to last year's "Spooning With Strangers"!) and collect the crap-ton of medals I was set to earn from certain Ragnar 'combos' I had completed this year.
PRELUDE
Uneventful trip down to Las Vegas. Apparently it was Returning Missionary night at the airport or something, as the baggage area and upstairs pre-security area were nearly filled to the brim with the typical fare of Mormon-sized families, balloons, and "Welcome home Elder/Sister so-and-so" signs. I'm accustomed to seeing small groups, but not hundreds! Hope everyone made it to where they needed to be. In spite of this, lines were short and flights were on time.
Being in Van 2 and having a later than usual (for us) 8am start time, this meant getting to sleep in a bit at the nice condo that a teammate had rented. After arriving later in the evening, I was in bed around midnight and out till about 9. This was probably the most I've ever slept pre-Ragnar, which was an encouraging start. We got some breakfast and packed it up to head to Exchange 6, which was only ~20 minutes away, giving us a nice cushion to relax for a bit that morning.
Leg 1 (5.56 miles, 1:50 pm)
Lots of factors working against me for this one. Apart from having not run much, I was dealing with 80+ temps (which I suck at, especially when not acclimated) and uphill nearly the whole way (which I also suck at, especially when exposed and mingled with said heat). It was about as pleasant as expected and I finished about 7 minutes behind my target time. To add insult to injury, the famous "1 mile to go" sign came at about 4.25, which gave me brief hope that the leg would come out short. Alas it actually ended up about a hundred meters long, making for a rather soulcrushing last 'mile'.
But at least I looked pretty while taking the handoff...
I was out of it for awhile at the finish; slumped down in a dazed state beside the exchange, wondering where it all went wrong and wishing I stayed in school. Then I gradually felt better after I was finally able to get some Gatorade down and after having copious amounts of water dumped on me by my supportive teammates.
Leg 2 (3.37 miles, 5:45am)
We got some sandwiches during the down-time and headed to the next major exhange to 'sleep'. It was too stuffy and too hard to get comfortable in the van and too cold outside (alas, there were no indoor sleeping options this time), despite the unreasonably warm temps during the day. This lead to uncomfortably shifting around in my seat, resting my eyes from time to time, and taking in the chorus of snores from those more successful in the sleep endeavor than me.
We actually switched up the legs a bit on this one. I swapped with our #10 runner who craves distance and downhills, both of which my 6.1 mile leg would offer. Even though she's a bit slower than me, I correctly guessed that she would enjoy it much more than I would. I was pleased to see her crush it and was more than happy to take her 3 mile leg and get a little extra recovery time.
I was able to take the next handoff from my wife, who did well with her leg and gave me an extra butt smack for good luck, of course. I headed out just as it was beginning to get light out and encountered a gaggle (herd? pack? murder?) of bunnies running across the path and hoped this was a good omen. The leg was mostly downhill with a couple speed bumps and a rather rude little climb at the end. After taking it out pretty easy, I opened up a little bit as I felt pretty good and was enjoying the cooler air and lack of sunlight. Another runner had left just before I did, which gave me a nice target to key off of. I kept him about 80-100 meters in front of me and then closed the gap and shot past at around 2 miles in.
Felt tired during the 3rd mile, but just focused on maintaining and keeping going. I was able to hold it together to the end, despite nearly making a wrong turn at the exchange (thanks volunteers for obstructing the right way and not saying anything till I was a good 8-10 seconds down the other direction :p). Came out to be a bit long from the 3.0 advertised - some of it chalked up to my brief misadventure - but I still ran a faster time than expected. Splits (since they weren't super embarrassing) came out to 8:18-7:54-8:10-7:33 pace (.37). Runners were pretty scattered and we were just about bringing up the rear by that point, but I still picked up 3 kills!
In the hour or two after this leg, I was fired up and felt the best that I had during the entire race. Of course I knew this didn't mean much for my last leg and naturally crashed pretty hard beforehand.
Leg 3 (5 miles, 2:45pm)
Fortunately we were able to access some indoor sleeping at the high school Exchange 24 and found a room with some wrestling mats that made excellent sleeping pads! Based on projections, we anticipated having around 3 hours to potentially sleep. Unfortunately, a curious noise began outside the doors a bit later and my wife was smart enough to check the rag-mag and realized that the exchange had shut down. Not wanting to be taken for homeless people (which wouldnt be an entirely unfair mistake by this point), we quickly packed up to head out. We were greeted outside by a relatively large marching band contingent and a parking lot nearly deserted of Ragnar vans (oops). It was nice to have our own personal musical escorts at least. We ended up with just over an hour of sleep; still better than nothing, but never quite enough, as it typically goes with Ragnar.
We spent a lot of time waiting around in the parking lot at the major exchange, as time seemed to drag by slower than ever. As our anticpated hand-off window grew closer, we were approached by a race official making the rounds to inform us that we were going to be up against the finishing cut-off time of 8pm and may want to consider 'leapfrogging' (the practice where the next runner is sent ahead of their leg before the previous runner finishes). With that in mind, I took off early.
The heat had come back for this leg, but didn't seem as bad as it did in leg 1 and with more shaded parts. Nonetheless, I still felt pretty trashed at the beginning and had a really hard time getting my body going. This leg was advertised as being gradually uphill, though not as bad as leg 1. That assessment was pretty fair; the only rough parts that I noticed were a highway overpass in the first mile (followed by a nice downhill) and a stretch of maybe a half mile at ~2.5. Otherwise it was mercifully flat. There were also several red light stops, which made it harder to get a rhythm going.
I struggled mightily during the first half, then caught a bit of a second wind as we left the sidewalk to briefly follow a dirt path that lead to a nice bikepath along a canal. I kept a pretty good tempo for most of this last section, but suspiciously eyed the "1 mile to go" sign that popped up much earlier than expected at 4 miles, thinking I was in for more trickery. Just beyond this point, we left the bike path and came out onto some neighborhood streets. From the historically erroneous markings, I knew I had anywhere from a half mile to a mile and a half to go and was just working on keeping moving. But after a couple minutes, I saw the wonderful sight of orange volunteer flags and a congregation of vans, signaling an early end to the journey. I picked it up accordingly and finished feeling strong, as I was done about 3/4ths of a mile sooner than anticipated. I finished this leg 9 minutes under my target time, which was obviously inaccurate with the short course, but was still on pace to be comfortably under, especially since I was feeling good at that point, so I was happy.
The leapfrogging continued and most everyone had decent last legs, allowing us to finish up by 7 and proceed to merrymaking.....'merrymaking' mainly consisting of gorging on pizza and going into a coma.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Ragnar Vegas has a bit of an infamous reputation for chaos and disarray. Apart from a few hiccups, such as a few inaccurate measurements (the last of which I was very thankful for) this year was definitely better than years past. The biggest issue was probably the finish area, which always seems to turn into an unmitigated disaster. I think it was a good idea having it in a more central and accessible location (Red Rock casino), but Ragnar traffic combined with local patrons made the entry and parking situation a bit sketchy. In fairness, much of the issue in this area was due to crazed drivers and trying to evade them with our big tank. The main problem was that there were absolutely no directionals pointing us toward where the finish was, which is a problem on a big resort property with a labryinth of a casino. After asking several people and turning it into a virtual treasure hunt, we finally located it in a nice little outdoor pool area. The setup here was actually pretty sweet and one of the nicer finish areas I've seen, but it might be helpful if you actually indicated where it was, since it's not readily visible from the parking areas.
Crowd control and team-reunification at the immediate finish area was also a bit of a disaster. Some crazy little lady with a megaphone (whom I believe is the race director and whom I've never seen have a pleasant interaction with anybody in the 2 years I've done Vegas) was more or less screaming at team members to get behind the barricades at the finish and not go any further up-course the path to look for their runner (visibility was relatively poor in the immediate finish area), because they would be announcing runners. Of course no such announcement was made when our final runner came through, which lead to a rather hilarious scene of me jumping/stumbling across the barricade to run in with him, which made mean director lady fairly apoplectic, with our team gradually strung out in pursuit.
The other main issue at the finish - all food service was shut down at 7pm, leaving only the overpriced restaurants elsewhere in the casino labryinth, despite the 8pm finish cutoff. Because of the location and close proximity to other stuff, it ended up being not a huge deal, but if you're going to provide food, then provide it for everybody - especially the folks out there the longest. C'mon now.
Less significant issue, but there seemed to be some inconsistence with application of rules. Several of our runners had been wearing headlamps around their leg during night runs, as they felt it gave them better lighting and was less annoying. Nobody had spoken a word about it till our last runner, when one volunteer was determined to infract us because his headlamp was not on his head (the rules state you must have some sort of additional light source on the front, whether it be a headlamp or flashlight, but says nothing about where on your body it should be). We didnt really care, since it was the last leg and you can get 3 infractions before getting the boot, but perhaps more clarification should be given to volunteers ahead of time so that power-hungry types don't take the strictest interpretation and wreak havoc on everybody.
Despite the lack of actual training, it was still a fun weekend as always. Apart from the miserable first leg, I didn't have the "why the hell do I do this? Never again!" self-loathing moment that I usually have somewhere in the middle. Van 1 definitely had the better deal, as they had a few Vegas locals, given them the opportunity to shower/relax/sleep comfortably in between (this was my van's situation during Wasatch Back, so I can't complain). None the less, I never really felt debilitatingly tired. Very supportive van, with a great 'van mom' or two, to which I was happy to return the favor. It did light a bit of a fire under me, which I hope lasts awhile. I've already seen that Ragnar SoCal in April falls over spring break for my school district, so I'm hoping to get a team together for that as well. I keep trying to convince myself that Ragnar is a bad idea, but if it's the thing that makes running 'fun' again, I'm all for it.
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