Ragnar Relay-6 Idiots, 201.3 Miles

Ragnar Relay is supposed to be for teams of 12, but they do have an Ultra Division for us Crazies! The best part was getting different t-shirts that say Ultra Runner on the back (obviously the back cause not only do we run double, we are faster)!! This 2 day experience was a blast. Gabi Keri and John Pyle spent all of Thursday morning trying to get ahold of me at school to find out if I would replace some "leeker" that dropped out. With 18 hours notice to the start, I said sure! So along with John, Gabi and I, there was Katie Waters, Andy Berster and Michele Proch. I got the 5th stage, which was an exact Half Marathon in Clermont. Anywhere else in the State of Florida would have been pancake flat, but no, not Clermont. I got all 3 hills on the entire course. I went out in about 8:30 pace cause it just felt good. I loved the hills and broke 2 hours for the section. My next segment started around 10 PM and I think ended around 2 AM. I am not sure, it was a complete debacle. We had a problem with an exchange and instead of just running 6 miles, I started the next leg of 4 miles. I bonked at about 8.5 miles. We thought we had the exchange all worked out for the next checkpoint but we screwed that up too. After about a 40 minute delay I went on for the next 3 miles. I was destroyed, running about 15 minute miles. Somehow, I got to the next checkpoint and handed off to John and went and died in the van. 26 miles in 2 segments and I thought I was done. Somehow I recovered enough to run the 2nd to last leg of 7 miles in 9:30 pace and handed off to Katie to bring it home. We all decided to run the last mile together (in our ultra shirts and John carrying Old Glory). After 200 miles, we were able to bang out a sub 9 minute mile. That entire trip was amazing. These people are awesome! After we got our medals and picture taken, we plowed thru 2 large pizzas and headed home! Also gotta thank Michele's boyfriend Jim for driving the Van the entire way from Clearwater to Daytona!