Called To Serve

Brett's sister Shawnee recieved her mission call yesterday and had everyone over this evening for the big opening.


Look out Pennsylvania, Sister Carter is on her way!

Well, So Much For That Photo Op

192 Miles Later

Well, we survived the crazy ride that was Ragnar.

Everyone understands the basics of Ragnar, right? 1 team, 12 runners, 2 vans (6 runners in each one), 192 miles. Van one has runners 1-6 and van two has runners 7-12. The course is split up into 36 different legs. Each runner runs 3 legs. The mileage and difficulty of each leg varies. Make sense?

Our team, Saints and Sinners, met up on Thursday night to officially meet each other, (we all knew at least 1 person on the team who knew someone else which connected us all in some strange way that I won't try to explain), carb load and decorate our vehicles. I loved the idea for our team. Van one consisted of the Sinners who each chose one of the 7 Deadly Sins to represent (the leftover sin became part of the van name.) Van two (which Brett and I were in) was full of the Saints who each represented one of the 7 Virtues. Fun, right?


The Saints



and our Van O' Charity. (Don't worry, we erased the "Faith In Every Footstep" before we even left Logan. The lameness was just too much.)


The Sinners


and the Lustmobile.

That night, us Saints pitched a tent in our team captain Anna's parents' back yard and tried to get some sleep. We were up at 6am (okay, 6:30) the next morning so we could get to the Utah State campus to cheer our starting Sinner on at 8:00am.

After that, we had some breakfast and drove off to exchange 6 where we checked in and waited to start our legs.


I was the first runner for the Saints and got the hand off from Michelle around noon.


I. Am. A Dork.
And, if I continue this running business, I need to invest in some real running clothes so as not to look like I am running in my pajamas.

The rest of our first legs went by really fast. Each runner's leg was fairly short and all the runners on our van were really fast (me being the exception.) After we were done running, we grabbed some dinner and then went to wait at exchange 17.

Our second legs were ran in the dark (I started around 11:30pm.) Running at night was a totally new experience and was really pretty fun.


Jamie passing off the slap bracelet (Ragnar's version of a baton) to Brett around 2:45am.

Our van finished our second legs around 6am and after chatting with some of the Sinners for a few minutes, went off to get some much needed rest. (24 hours with no sleep? Blah. All-nighters are so not as cool as they used to be.) Some of the local high schools were doing fundraisers where you could pay a couple bucks to sleep inside their gym. We drove to South Summit High School where Brett and I, along with the rest of our Saints, crashed almost immediately.

The Ragnar slogan "Run. Drive. Sleep? Repeat." has a question mark after sleep for a reason. 2 hours later, we got a text from the Sinners telling us that they had just sent out their second to last runner. We gathered our stuff up and headed off to the next major exchange to run our last legs.


Our saintly crew supporting Jamie on her wicked 3rd leg. On most legs, teams were allowed to park alongside the road, cross the street and support their runner by giving them water, words of encouragement, etc. Definitely one of my favorite aspects of the race (both as a runner and as a supporter.)


Brett's third leg was ridiculous. He ran up was is known as Ragnar Hill. It was 4 miles of crazy steep hills, which would have been bad enough on their own, but add to that lack of sleep, previous runs, etc. and it was just nuts. He totally busted it out though.

After sending off our last runner, we took a shuttle from the exchange to Park City High School to meet up with the Sinners and wait to run through the finish line.


Me and Jamie, my running idol. Did I mention she did this 4 months pregnant?!


32 hours and 2 minutes later, we did it! Saints and Sinners at the finish line.


Talk about an amazing experience! I'm so glad Brett and I got to do this together. The race itself was fun, but having Brett there made it that much better. We had such a great time that we're actually planning on getting a team together for 2012. So, if you're up for hanging out in a cramped van with 5 other sweaty runners, feel like getting less than 3 hours of sleep in a 32 hour period next year, let us know!

RAGNAR, Here We Come!

In a matter of hours, Brett and  I are headed to Logan to meet our team and get ready for the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay.

I signed us up almost a year ago when I was extremely pregnant and therefore delusional.  When my friend called and asked if we wanted to run with her team, it seemed like the perfect way for me to get back into shape post-baby.  I mean, why go for a 5k when you can be part of a 192 mile relay, right?

Let's get this straight.  I'm not a distance runner.  I held my own in junior high track as a sprinter, but ask me to run anything longer than about a half a mile and I've got nothing.  And I'm not one of those people who claims to not be a runner then goes out and runs 3 miles the first day.  In fact, I started out barely jogging running a half mile at a time, which almost killed me.  It took me over three months to get to the point where I could run four miles without stopping.  And I'm still really slow.  Brett on the other hand, is awesome.  He hates when I talk about him at length on the blog, so let's just say that he's a pretty good (and fast) runner.

So check back in a couple of days.  As long as I survive, I'm sure I'll have lots to share.

Life Song