Run. Drive. Sleep. Repeat

YUP!!! You guessed 'er Chester!!! 202.1 Miles.

Let me explain to those who don't know what the RAGNAR Race is. The Ragnar "Del Sol" (here in AZ) is a race from Prescott to Mesa, which if you ask anyone familiar with the state of AZ, they will say, "Are you Crazy, I don't even drive that in my car!" The race is a total of 202.1 miles. Now before you say, " What? you ran how far?" You must know the format of the race. The race is broken up into 36 different legs, varying from 3 miles to almost 9.

So, first you find 12 insanely crazy people and you form your team. In our case, we, Staci (Ashlee's sister) her hubby Bacho and myself, were lucky enough to be asked by some ward members who were looking for teammates. Ash was going to run with us, but doctor's orders stated she better not. She was bummed out, next year though!!! Then of course, you have to chose a team name... "Running on Empty" was ours, for obvious reasons!!


Once the team was formed, you had to decide who would run what leg of the race. The thing with choosing your leg of the race, is once you picked your order 1-12, you have to stay in that order for the rest of the race. So everyone runs 3 separate legs of the race, and you just rotate through the team.

So now to the way the entire thing works. First runner takes off from the start line. The rest of the team jumps in the car and cheers them on as they drive up to the next exchange point. As that person finishes their leg, they pass the "baton" off to runner #2 and everyone else jumps in the car and goes up the course to the next exchange and so on and so forth for 36 different exchanges.... It is interesting though, because you actually split your team of 12 into two separate teams of 6 and while one of the teams of 6 are on the course the other team of 6 is off the course doing whatever you want to, mostly sleeping and eating and sleeping some more....
This format continues on until you finish the entire 202.1 miles and yes your team in out on the course non-stop for as long as it takes. It is very interesting to run at 1 AM along US-60 outside of Wickenburg and have a Semi wiz past you at 65 mph, and the Coyotes howling off in the dark desert on the other side of you... AWESOME!!!


Our race seemed to run very smoothly. Besides some sore muscles, sleep deprivation, and a few blisters, we all seemed to enjoy ourselves and enjoyed getting to know each others "smelly bodies." Just think about it. 6 people, well 5, since one of you you is out running, are in a SUV, you just ran 4-8 miles, you start to stink pretty quickly. But I guess since everyone stinks, you don't notice it, which is a good thing... We all seemed to have smiles on our faces, and lots of energy to cheer on the teammates running. Although, at 2 AM it was difficult to be too excited when you couldn't even keep your eyes open.

People all over the course are dressed up and acting goofy, so I decided for one of my legs of the race to wear the awesome gag-gift Ashlee's Dad gave me, the coolest hat ever. (BTW- I got some good laughs and honks for the wacky hair-hat).

Needless to say, we RAN, we DROVE, we SLEPT (kind of), and Started all over again for 202.1 miles in 36 hours and 26 minutes. We started at 8 AM on Friday, and finished at about 8:30 Saturday night. It really was a fun time and if anyone is looking to do it again next year, let us know, we would love to do it again.