Some of you are asking yourselves right now "What is a Ragnar?" Well, my uninformed friend, Ragnar is when someone says "Hey, guys! I think I'm going to run to Crazytown 200 miles away. I've got room for eleven more. Who's with me?"
Yep, I was one of those crazies this year. The Justice Legs of America, my team of crazies, was full of couples, ladies who's hubbies agree that they're crazy, and my giant cousin. We've got Superman and Supergirl played by Ryan and Shelli Olsen, Batman and Batgirl played by Ben and Malory Sandgren, Aquaman and Gypsy played by Brett and Kristina Tobler, Wolverine and Wonder Woman played by Jeremy and Andrea Rawlings, Fire by Sunnie Nield, Ice by Megan Grover, Thor by Joey Speredon (whom I can never call Joe), and I played Catwoman. We also had a team Superbaby coming in at 11 weeks and played by Matthew Rawlings.
It was a great time, and we only ran into a couple problems. Our first legs were great, even though it was stinkin' hot, and we were all excited for our second set. We met up with Van Two, took a short break, then ran again in the evening. The evening run was my favorite. Okay, it was really a middle of the night run, which I finished at 2:30 am. It wasn't all uphill or all downhill, but a set of softly rolling hills. Nothing too steep, not hot, not too long at only five miles. I could have done that run a couple times or added a couple miles to it.
We did run into problems after that though, and learned some great lessons along the way. Poor Wolverine had a sandwich after his afternoon run and put some mayonnaise on it that came out of the packet clear. He scraped it off, but still ate the sandwich. After his night run he was feeling extremely sick. We went to Batgirl's grandparents house where we had planned to sleep. Wolverine spent the night "hugging the toilet." After much discussion and debate he decided to not go to the hospital, but rode in the van with us helping to babysit.
Superbaby earned his name by only crying about 5 total minutes. Wonder Woman is one lucky mom!
The hardest runs we had to do were our last legs. three of us were supposed to have no van support on our longest, hottest, hardest runs. We didn't do the no van support thing, since it was so stinking hot and we didn't want to visit the hospital for dehydration. I personally had to run from Francis, UT to the Jordanelle Reservoir. I've decided that I don't want to ever do that again unless I'm being chased by mad axe-men. The part that made it so hard, though, was the heat. If it wouldn't have been so stinkin' hot it would have been hard, but not killer.
At the end of the race we all crossed the finish line together in full costume. It was pretty awesome, even if we were all tired and not feeling too super at the time.
So now to answer your questions: Did you get tired? Are you sore? Was it fun? Will you do it again next year? Are you crazy? Will your toenail grow back? The answer to them all is yes!
So why do we do it? It's a party on wheels and running shoes.
