Certified Rollers

At the beginning of the year I was really hopeful that I’d be back to normal by the time Ragnar rolled around in mid-April. That wasn’t really the case but while things haven’t really been getting better, they haven’t been getting worse either. Silver linings right?

For those not familiar with Ragnar Trail, it’s an eight-person team relay. The course consists of three loops, Green, Yellow, and Red. Each team member runs each loop once, fastest overall time wins. The race starts on Friday and finishes on Saturday, so most people end up running two night loops and one daylight loop. The start times are staggered based on projected times and team submitted ability so that everyone finishes within a few hours of each other on Saturday morning/early afternoon.

As the reigning champs, we had to start a little bit later on Friday, which made things interesting for my first two loops – more on that later. It’s definitely an interesting event. The format is way different than anything else I do all year but it’s a fun weekend of running and hanging out with friends.

Despite my lingering hamstring issues, I was really looking forward to this race. Not because I thought I was going to have an amazing race, but because I’ve been trying to focus on small attainable goals. For Ragnar, I set out to not worry about how fast I was running and just go out and have a fun weekend.

Things got off to a bit of a rocky start. I left work way later than I had planned, which meant I had to fight traffic to get to the race site. Normally, this would have sunk me before I had even started. I have a tendency to let things that are beyond my control have a disproportionate impact on me. Maybe it’s because I was going into the race with little to no expectations, or maybe whatever podcast I decided to listen to on the ride really captivated me but I didn’t feel like I was freaking out about being late the entire ride.

The race was a zoo when I got there. I was about two hours later than last year, so there was no one from Ragnar to be found. I dropped my gear at the drop off and made my way to the designated parking lot. No attendant, no shuttle. It was only a mile, so I ended up jogging in and I didn’t have to pay so it all worked out in the end.

I rendezvoused with Alan and got a chance to meet up with a few of the new team members while I set up my tent for the night. We ended up with four new faces but each brought their A game. Alan really stepped things up after last year, pulling from a number the local endurance athlete hot spots like – Dirty Spokes, and ITL. He also brought in a ringer in George Darden. George is a really fast masters runner, triathlete, and ultra endurance monster. He was easily the MVP of our team.

Alan kept me on the anchor leg, which was huge given how late I got out of work. I figured I’d run around the same time of day/night as I did last year, but they pushed our start time a little bit later given that we won last year and our team was faster – on paper – this time around.

That meant my first lap was about 30 minutes later than last year. The nice thing about the little bit later start was that it was fully dark by the time I ran. Last year, it was dark but there was still a little bit of daylight lingering that made it really difficult to see with just my headlamp. The light was really flat and that made depth perception a little wonky.

This year, I brought a flashlight with me, while it was a little cumbersome at first I really enjoyed the extra light. I didn’t fun faster, but I absolutely felt more confident. Once again, I started with the Yellow Loop. This is the worst loop. I don’t care what anyone says about the green, yellow, red, ranking system. Yellow eats.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I have a hard time getting things going with the late start time and it’s not reflective of the course, but something about it just doesn’t work for me. I will say, I was much more relaxed on yellow this year. I tried to find a groove that worked without stressing my hamstring too much. Similar to the Road Atlanta trails the week before the up and down was a challenge for it but as long as I kept things under control, I felt okay.

I was able to move through the various people on the trail ahead of me. If there was one thing that gave me confidence, it was catching people the whole way. I did get a few people that tried to hold me off, but I managed to grind them down over time.

The loop was very similar to last year, with only a slight deviation at the end. I was super happy with the deviation because it cut out one little short – wholly unnecessary – section of single track before the transition area. Without that, you had about a quarter mile of double track after you came out of the woods before you finished. WHEELHOUSE. Well, normally that would be my wheelhouse, but I still tried to cut it loose a little bit and of course let out a nice loud – Choo! Choo! when I ran past our camp.

Overall my legs were uneventful and as I type this, not really worth recapping, so here is the quick and dirty. Yellow was similar to last year, about 10 seconds slower, but I’d say overall the loop was a bit shorter with out the single track at the end so call it a minute shorter. Not a great first leg but not bad. I kept us roughly on pace with Alan’s projections.

I was almost three minutes slower on the green loop than last year. As you can imagine, my hamstring got tighter as the night wore on. I also didn’t get any sleep between my first and second loops, last year I slept a little bit and I think that helped.

The Red Loop had the most change from last year’s course. They added a good bit of farm field and an extra section of dirt road. My watch said it was longer, but I don’t know it’s probably pretty close to the same distance wise. If anything, it might actually be faster. I’d love to know what I could have put down on that loop if I had been in good shape. As it was, I ran almost five minutes slower. I’m not saying that as a complaint. It’s just a fact. I was substantially slower this year than last year, but I knew that was going to be the case going in.

At the end of the day, my goal was to put in a solid effort to help the team and make sure I didn’t come out any worse for the wear. Mission accomplished. I didn’t lead the team, but I brought us home fast enough for the win. Injury wise. No worse. Of course, no better either, but that’s another entry for another day.

We ended up winning the open category in 17:22:53 ahead of team Fleetfoot in 18:02:42. The top four teams, including us, bested our 18:39 from last year but we went over an hour faster. I’m thinking we can cut another 10 minutes off that time if I get myself sorted out. All in all, it was a really fun weekend with a great group. This year’s spork medal was legit, but I am looking forward to adding another belt buckle to the collection.