(Note: If you missed the first two parts of my recap, they can be found here: Part 1 and Part 2)
I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I finished my last leg. I was hurting and tired, but I had pushed through! The rest of the day I got to just be along for the ride, hopping out to cheer on our runners and just enjoy being with the team.
Finally, we dropped Chris off at the start of the very last leg of the relay (this was supposed to be my leg but we had switched). We had a good amount of time to head to the finish since the leg was 7.5 miles. On our way, we dropped Bruce and Sykes off at the 3 mile out mark and 1 mile out mark, so that they could be waiting for Chris and join him for support near the end of his run. The rest of us parked at the huge finish line lot at Silver Strand State Beach and met up with our other van of runners (minus two, who had also run up the course a mile to join Chris). Those of us that were injured/exhausted/over running made our way through the tunnel in front of the finish line to meet our team as they ran in so that we could all finish together.
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| Sean and our mascot, Tiny the T-Rex |
When we saw the other neon yellow shirts come around the corner, IT WAS ON! We (and our mascot, Tiny) crossed the finish line as a team as the announcers called out our team name, and just like that, Ragnar was over. We had made excellent time and we already immensely proud of ourselves. We were given our bag of medals and excitedly divvied them up, and I headed over to the ten to get my double medal for the LA Marathon and Ragnar finishers (I might have even brought my LA medal to the finish line for some pictures). We took our formal team picture at the finish, along with some other fun shots and headed over to get our FREE PIZZA AND BEER at the finish line party (free food? yes, please!).
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| Finish line and 3 medals! |
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| Sean, Me, and Adam |
As we sat around with our libations, recounting funny stories from the course, they had a DJ out in the party area and we couldn't help but get up and sing and dance to songs from Grease (hey, we were just thrilled to not be running anymore!).
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| Tiny and I rockin our medals at the finish line party |
I headed out to the beach to get some photos of my medals before hopping in the van with the rest of us party-poopers who were too tired to go beer tasting with the rest of the team in San Diego. I napped for most of the ride home and had never been happier to take a shower and put on clean clothes when I finally arrived home.
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| Love the new bling! |
Ragnar was truly an amazing experience. I didn't know how I would handle the sleep deprivation and being cooped up in a van for two days, but it went surprisingly better than I had thought. While I had originally planned on it being a "One and done" sort of race for me, I can't wait to participate again next year, hopefully healthier and able to push myself more.
And for those of you who are curious, our team finished 52nd overall, which is not bad considering the 700 teams that participated! And that was with two injured runners and and entire team of Ragnar newbies!
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| Our official Finish Line photo |
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