Ragnar Relay!!!

From Friday morning at 10am, to Saturday afternoon at 3pm, 12 of us embarked on 190 miles through New Haven CT to Boston, MA. We ran through the day, through the night, through the pouring rain, through the darkness, through the detours, through the hills and even the mountains, we ran through our hometown and finished at Harvard Stadium. It was such an amazing experience and I left having 11 new CLOSE friends. When you live in a van for 29 hours, you have no choice but to become close CLOSE friends with the people you are with. We had soooooo much fun!!
Together we finished in exactly 28 hours, 57 minutes and 28 seconds. Which is roughly 9:11 min/mile pace. Not too bad for getting led off course 4 times! Our race started at 10AM. Van 1 ran the first 6 legs. My van, van 2 ran legs 7-12 and then van 1 ran 13-19 and we ran legs 20-26 and then we did that one more time. So each team member had three legs.

Running from the law- 28:57:28

Here's our van. We were the second van and we ran from about 4pm-8pm then 1am-7am then 11am-3pm. My legs were at 5pm, 2am and 11:45am. My first leg, I ran 6.6 miles. I started about a quarter mile behind another team and within the first three miles, I got up to him and passed him. I wanted to stay together because it was kind of scary on these main roads but he was going close to 11 min pace! Here are the stats:

Date	9 /11/2009
Route	Ragnar Leg 1
Distance	6.60 mi
Time	57:02
Pace	08:38/mile

Mile 1: 8:17
Mile 2: 8:43
Mile 3: 8:46
Mile 4: 8:42
Mile 5: 9:03
Mile 6: 8:37
.60 : 8:33

After all our legs finished around 8pm, our team said hello to Van 1 and then went to dinner. After dinner, we drove to our next major checkpoint/exchange area and went to bed. From 10:30ish to 12:30ish, we slept. At 12:30 my alarm went off, and we got ready to run. My leg was at 2am and it was 4.5 miles. We had to wear headlamps, but lights and reflector vests.
I ended up running the first mile of Nancy's leg with her since she had to go through a trail which I wasn't going to have her do by herself at 3am! This leg I ran a little slow basically because I was so scared and because I got lost. It seems like every mile I slowed down. Stats:

Date	9 /12/2009
Route	Ragnar Leg 2
Distance	5.70 mi
Time	52:53
Pace	09:16/mile

Mile 1: 8:34
Mile 2: 8:57
Mile 3: 9:17
Mile 4: 9:30
Mile 5: 9:44

Our vans legs finished around 7am and then we drove to Upton (where one of our girls lived) to catch some sleep, eat and relax. Then around 9:30am, we headed to the final major checkpoint. Here we are hanging out!

Once our team passed off and our first runner was on the road, it started to absolutely DOWNPOUR. And then it was my turn to run. Its one thing to be running and it starts to rain but to have to start in that weather is insane. The good thing is that I ran through my hometown so that was fun!

My last leg was 5.5 miles. It was pretty hard because there was huge hills, but at least I knew the route. Stats:

Date	9 /12/2009
Route	Ragnar Leg 3
Distance	5.50 mi
Time	48:42
Pace	08:51/mile

Mile 1: 8:34
Mile 2: 8:51
Mile 3: 8:53
Mile 4: 9:11
Mile 5:9:13
last .50 Mile: 7:51

After my leg, we followed our runners to Boston and then parked at Harvard Stadium. Around 2:50, we saw our runner sprinting down the finish line and we jumped in with her and finished as a team!

And here is myself and our team captain Nancy at the finish line! What a weekend!