Ragnar

I don't know why this has taken me so long to write about but it has. Every time I would sit down to do it something else would come up or I would get distracted on the Internet. I think it was just so overwhelming to sit and write the whole weekend down so I decided that I would divide it up each leg. So I am starting with Thursday night and Friday morning, but before I begin let me tell you a little about how I got involved in running. When Dan and my sister in law Kenna ran Vegas Ragnar they decided they wanted to do another one. So in November they decided to join Tara and Lauren's team for the Southern California Ragnar. Tara and Lauren were both on their team for Vegas and we know them well since Tara works with my Mom. So they had their team of 12 and I was going to be their driver again. The team name was My So Cal'd Life. Well in January I decided I wanted to lose weight so I started walking/jogging. At the same time a friend of mine made this challenge to exercise for 30 mins at least five times a day so I decided I would take the challenge. I got to where I could run for 4 minutes and then I would walk a minute. I was running about 2.5 to 3 miles 3 or 4 times a week. Well at the end of February one of Dan's team dropped out so they started looking for a replacement. Immediately Kenna asked if I would join but I wasn't ready to commit to it. So we started asking around but no one could do it so the first weekend of March I ran 4 miles and felt really good afterwards so I decided to join their team. Also during February we found out that my Brother Cris would be running the race also. Ragnar was having two teams from the show Biggest Loser run the race. As a way of promotion they decided to have auditions to have two people who weren't on the show join them and race with them. Well as a kind of dare my Brother submitted a video and got picked. He was flown out here for free and they put him up in a hotel at the start and end of the race. So my Brother decided to have his whole family come out and do their vacation in April instead of the summer. I trained really hard and felt really prepared as the time came. Dan was runner 2 and I was runner 5. We had Kenna in our van she was runner 4, which was so great because she got to hand off to me and then we also had Yvonne, Baylea and Tom who we didn't know until that weekend. So my Brother and his family flew in on Thursday and My Mom, my Sister Leah and my Sister in law Jessica all pitched in to watch our kids while we ran the race. So we dropped our kids off about 4 on Thursday afternoon and headed down to Huntington Beach where the race was starting and stayed at the Hotel with Cris and Kenna.

Here is the map of our first legs. Dan's is first he ran 5 miles and if you look at the bottom you will see the elevation he was mostly flat, mine on the other hand had a huge hill that was totally awful but luckily I only had 2.5 miles to run.

Our Van already to go. Cris and I at the start of the race!Here is the start line we started at 6:30am and we had to be there at 5:15 so I was so thankful that we had stayed across the street.Dan is about to start his first leg.Dan running into his first exchange. He did so great he finished his first leg in 43 minutes.
Here I am running into my first exchange. I had a hard time with the huge hill and didn't make the time I wanted but I finished which is really all that mattered. I ran it in 41 mins.Tom waiting for me to come in after my first leg!After our first legs were finished we came back to our house to rest up a bit and shower. Our house was only about 10 minutes out of the way and since it was so hot that weekend we needed a place to get out of the heat and out of the van. My Brother's van joined us also. It was so much fun to hang out with them and get to know them better.