Tag: Ragnar trail

Ragnar Trail Angel Fire – leg #2 – Angel Fire, NM (2015)

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Check out part 1 here.

After my first leg, I headed back to our condo to shower and grab some food while the rest of my team hung out down in the village. I was just getting ready to head back down to the village when it started to hail! Our third runner was on the course and she had specifically requested that spot so that she could run her legs from hard to easy. She was really nervous about the first leg and since this was her first Ragnar, she was nervous about the whole concept of what we were doing. I texted one of my other teammates and said that she would never want to run another race with me again! Luckily, she was a good sport and after the rain and hail she was able to see blue skies at the top of the mountain which I shared on Instagram. 

My next run would be that same loop in the dark. Originally, I was expecting to start that run around 8:30pm, but with our 2-hour delay and with one of our runners getting injured on his first leg, I actually started just before midnight.



After the transition tent and a short stint down the sidewalk with the other two loops, we took a right and headed up the road toward the chair lift. I did a lot of walking in the first 3 miles, mostly due to how steep the trail was, but I was also struggling a little bit in just not feeling right – I don’t think my hydration and fueling was where it needed to be throughout the day on Friday. I felt great for my first leg, but it was an easy leg, and I didn’t really eat that much before I ran. I grabbed a breakfast bar and a Clif bar, but that was about it from 8:00am – 3:00pm and then after my run, I ate some chicken and pasta, but probably not enough to get me back to where I needed to be. I’m glad I had my GU with me for this run because I could definitely feel the energy draining and even getting hungry as I ran.

We had a full moon for the night run and it was beautiful, if not a little creepy coming down through the trees. At some points I thought I was getting close to an aid station or something because it seemed like there was a light up ahead, but it was just the moon filtering through the trees.

  • Mile 1 – 15:44 
  • Mile 2 – 20:23
  • Mile 3 – 21:51
  • Mile 4 – 13:25
  • Mile 5 – 14:22
  • Mile 6 – 18:31

Overall pace: 17:22
Overall time: 1:44:15

Once I hit the aid station which marked the halfway point and signaled the end of the uphill, I was able to pick up some speed going downhill. This leg was part of a mountain bike trail, so there were some switchbacks going uphill and then for the downhill portion, there were banked turns. Unfortunately since I was doing this one in the dark, it was hard for me to judge just how fast I could go. I also started having an issue with my right ankle – I think my shoes were a little too loose when I started the run, so by the time I did about half of the downhill, I had actually bruised my ankle from my foot moving around in my shoe and hitting the front outside part of the shoe. Between my left IT band starting to act up and my right ankle hurting, I took the last section of the downhill where all of the legs come together a lot slower than I did the first time. 

I got back to the transition tent about when I expected to after just under an hour and 45 minutes, but my teammates weren’t there! I had to leave the bib in the transition tent and I ran back to our tent, but no one was there either. I texted as many people as I could think of who would probably be awake at the time and no one answered me. After about 5 minutes of waiting, the next runner showed up and had to get his gear on before he started out on the Green loop. We had one other miscommunication about timing later in the race, but luckily we only had that happen to us twice where runners were waiting for the next person to get there before starting. 

The overnight runs were cold! It got down to about 35 degrees and the one thing that most of us forgot to bring was gloves. Luckily, I had lots of hand warmers to share, but gloves definitely would have made waiting more pleasant. I think everyone took advantage of the awesome bonfire that Ragnar had going throughout the night – drying out shoes and clothes and keeping warm while waiting on teammates to come into the transition tent. There were also smores and hot chocolate, but I have yet to partake in those during one of these races – I never want to before I run and by the time I’m done, I forget again!

One more leg to go!

Ragnar Trail Angel Fire – leg #1 – Angel Fire, NM (2015)

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The Charlotte crew of our team flew into New Mexico on Wednesday night to give us plenty of time to pick up the cars, get organized and settle in before the rest of our teammates flew in the next morning. We made our obligatory stop at REI the next morning to pick up a couple of camp chairs and other essentials before heading to a local Walmart to stock up on food for our condo. The Angel Fire race is apparently one of the two trail races where you can actually stay in a hotel / condo / house and still be within walking distance of the village, so we got a condo for the 8 of us so that we could eat real meals between our running. Plus, a warm place to sleep and a shower are never bad things to have during a race in the mountains. We stopped outside of Santa Fe for lunch and found some dinosaurs!



We actually saw the dinosaurs from the highway and as soon as we decided to stop for lunch, we knew we had to go find them. They’re outside of what looked like a mechanic’s shop, so we just parked beside some other vehicles and wandered around for awhile, until it started to rain on us (a preview of things to come!). 

It took us about 2.5 hours to get to Angel Fire, but the check-in process was super easy and we were on our way to the condo to unpack and get our last full night’s sleep before the race. The one thing we didn’t realize about the condo was that it was four floors! The shared shower was down on the second floor and there were four of us sharing the top floor, with the living room and kitchen on the third floor – just walking up the steps with our suitcases was a challenge now that we were at 8,500′ elevation. We all came from just a couple hundred feet elevation, so we knew this was going to be a challenge for us throughout the race weekend.

I was our lead runner and we were set to start at 1:00pm. I was down at the village early to volunteer for our team, so I was there in plenty of time to see the first teams start off at 11 and the second group start at 12 and before long, it was just about time for me to get started… and then there was lightning! We ended up with a 2-hour delay for our start, but we were allowed to just start late and didn’t have to skip any runners (the teams that had already started had to skip the next two runners). So, I used the extra time to eat some more food and we all put on our Ragnar tattoos. Then, at 3:00, I was in a large group of runners and away we went!

I started off on the Green loop, which was the shortest loop at only 3.6 miles. All of the loops had hills to them, but the Green loop started out with a significant downhill portion. That partnered with the fact that there were so many other people on the course meant that I was flying for the first mile.

  • Mile 1: 8:56
  • Mile 2: 11:00
  • Mile 3: 15:11
  • Last .6: 8:32
I knew after the first mile that I wouldn’t be able to keep up that pace, but I also knew I had some hills coming, so I figured I could bank some time for when I had to walk, which didn’t take too long. There were a lot of people walking the uphill to mile 3 and we commented that this wasn’t a good sign of things to come on the Red loop. 
I don’t think anyone on our team got any pictures of the Green loop, but we wandered down a dirt road, along a smaller bike trail, then off-trail onto a patch of mowed grass before heading to run on the road against traffic and then back off road and up, up, uphill. The Yellow loop merges with the Green loop somewhere on the uphill and stays together through the rest of the course, eventually joining with the Red loop on the steep downhill section. I passed 12 people on the Green loop, but I was almost caught at the very end. I had a really good pace going down the hill, but there was a section where we had to go up and down steps as we went through the Angel Fire Resort where I slowed down before we ended up back on the sidewalk that lead back to the transition tent. I was going as fast as I could down the sidewalk and I could hear one of the guys I had passed on the downhill coming up from behind me.
 
We gave each other high-fives after we finished, him just a few seconds behind me. I told him I could hear him catching up to me and I wasn’t going to let him pass me. It’s great to get pushed at the end of the race and still have the energy to make yourself go faster! After we got our second runner onto the course, my teammates met me and asked me how I thought it went – the picture sums it up best!
 
 Up next: leg 2, my overnight run on the Red loop.

Race #9: Ragnar Trail Relay – WV part II

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Yesterday, I described some of the challenges we had on Friday with the rain and mud, but Saturday morning, the sun came out and while it still wasn’t very warm with the wind, it was much nicer than Friday afternoon / night. 

While I was sleeping, the team continued running and because of the trail conditions, we slowly became farther and farther behind our projected pace. Originally, we were planning to be finished by around 11:00am, but by 8:00am, we knew that number was way off. As I woke up, our team was discussing the possibility of doubling up our runners so that for each leg (red, yellow, green), two people from the team would run at the same time with the only stipulation being that the two people had to run together. Our captain went to talk to the race officials to see if we would be able to do that. Unfortunately, because runner #2 was out on the course (on the toughest leg), we were told that we were unable to double-up. At the time, only those teams who hadn’t started their last legs yet (i.e. were at runner #8 or less on their second leg) were allowed to double-up. 

In the meantime, one of my teammates asked me to switch legs with him since he was battling a knee injury and my last leg was going to be the shortest loop and his was going to be the longest loop. I willingly agreed to switch since originally I was thinking of running that leg with him depending on how I felt after my second leg so that I could end up running all 3 legs and I was well rested since I didn’t get to run Friday afternoon. What I didn’t know was that our runner who was currently running the hardest loop was also battling an injury and had thought about asking me to switch with her if runner #8 hadn’t. Luckily, she was a major trooper and made it through her leg, despite having to walk a majority of it due to her hip injury. 

As our #3 runner went out onto the course, the course officials gave us the green light to start doubling-up on our runners. The runner who switched with me immediately went out to catch up with our runner who was on the course and the rest of us started packing up the campsite so that once we finished we could head out (and get warm & dry!). 

Leg #3 – Green Loop Red Loop
I ran with our captain for the last loop and we were both amazed at how difficult the course was in terms of hills and major rocks to climb up, over and between. I am definitely thankful that I didn’t have to run that loop in the dark! 

  • Mile 1 – 15:23
  • Mile 2 – 18:27
  • Mile 3 – 17:48
  • Mile 4 – 19:05
  • Mile 5 – 17:07
  • Mile 6 – 19:36
  • Last .47 – 19:39
I still felt pretty good after finishing that loop, but I know all of my teammates were hurting from the 3 (or more) loops that they did. The other person whose loop got skipped Friday afternoon ran twice overnight to pace / try keep up with two of the other women on our team. 

I was able to take some pictures on the last trail since we definitely had to do some walking and after seeing other people’s pictures from the other trails, I definitely wish I would’ve run the Yellow loop in the daylight. The photos of the trail below are from the Red loop and the finish line and, of course, the swag!

As in the Key West relay, Ragnar provided free race photos. The Trail Lunatics survived!
Review
I’m not sure how I feel about this race… I enjoyed the trails that I was able to do, but I’m really disappointed that I didn’t get to do all 3 legs. Now, I think the Ragnar officials definitely made the right decision to stop us for a couple hours as the storm came through, and I understand that, like any race, there’s a time limit, so at some point runners would definitely have to be skipped. I will also take blame for not going off and running the other loop on my own – I spent a lot of my “free time” catching up on the sleep I didn’t get in the week leading up to the race.I am also disappointed at the fact that it seems like there was only a photographer during the day on Friday and I didn’t see one on the course on Saturday, nor did I hear my teammates who ran the other loops talk about seeing one. Overall, I’m not sure I’ll do another trail relay race – I think our team was well prepared for the conditions that were thrown to us and we survived better than a lot of teams – but there’s only so much you can do with mud and rain and everyone ended up cold and wet. However, I will say that after this race, I’m definitely interested in trying out other trail races, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for one later this year.

Did you do the Ragnar Trail WV? Have you ever done other trail races?

Race #9: Ragnar Trail Relay – WV part I

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Pre-race
I wanted to start out this post by explaining a bit of the travel craziness that led up to my participating in this event… As I mentioned here, I was in San Antonio, TX a week before this race started and I spent the entire week working 14+ hour days at a conference for work, with only a couple of nights of more than 5 hours of sleep. On Thursday (June 12), I left San Antonio to travel back east to get to Bruceton Mills, WV by Friday morning to set up our team camp site and watch our team start the race at 11:30am. Those of you on the east coast know that last week was very rainy throughout the week and Thursday included some nasty thunderstorms which reached the whole way to Dallas where my connecting flight was. Luckily, my flight out of San Antonio was only delayed for about 30 minutes, but those who were trying to reach Dallas earlier in the day were on a perpetual delay as the storms hit Dallas. By the time I got to Dallas, my flight to Pittsburgh had an hour delay, which quickly turned into a two hour delay. Did I mention that I didn’t leave San Antonio until 6:30pm? I didn’t board the flight to Pittsburgh until about 10:30pm, we finally arrived about 2:00am and I got to my hotel in Washington, PA about an hour later. My plan was to get on the road by 8:00am so that I could get to the camp site by about 9:30 and I was only about a 30 minutes off, but considering I got about 4 hours of sleep, I’d say that was pretty good!

Let’s get camping!
I was able to drop off my supplies with my teammates and then get my car parked (several miles away) and jumped onto a shuttle to get back up to the main camp ground. By the time I got back up to the rest of my team and we did our introductions, it was time for us to go to the safety briefing and get our first runner on the course. Each runner had to run the three loops and we just rotated through them throughout the race. I was scheduled to be runner #6 which meant I would run the hardest course (Red) first. I really liked the way my race legs were planned, running the longest course first, the easiest course last and the middle course in the middle of the night. As our team started, we were able to talk about each of the legs and try to get an idea of what they would look like when it was our turn to run them. 

Leg #1 – Red Loop
As I was heading toward the transition area to meet runner #5, the clouds which had been hanging around the periphery of the woods started to look more ominous and it shortly began to rain. As I was standing around, starting to get cold, I wondered if I should go back to the camp site and grab a long sleeve shirt… about this time, the wind started to pick up and the tents in the village started blowing around and some started to lose their tops and we could see tents that were struggling to stay upright. My teammate who came with me to the start line decided to head back to our camp site to make sure that everything was staying put. I told him I would be fine and I would meet our incoming runner who was still out on the course. A few minutes later, we saw our first lightning strike and the race coordinators came over the speakers to let us know there would be a one hour delay for every team once the runners who were currently on the course made it back to the transition area AND that we would skip the next leg so that we could stay on track with timing. Unfortunately for me, that meant that my first leg just got eliminated! 

Once my teammate came in, we both headed back to our camp to see how our camp site was faring in the storm. Luckily, our teammates were able to hold down the fort (literally holding down the 10′ x 10′ tarps!) and all of our tents also survived the wind. Other teams were not so lucky, with many tents, supplies and decorations blowing everywhere. The aftermath of the storm left many teams under water and everyone hoping for sunshine to warm up and dry out everything.

So, no running on Friday the 13th for me. We ended up having a 2 hour delay with 2 runners being skipped because of the lightning. Once it stopped storming, everyone had even more mud to deal with on the trails and throughout the campground. 

Leg #2 – Yellow Loop
Originally, I was scheduled to start my leg around midnight, but with the extra rain we got in the afternoon, everyone had to slow down on the trails and, of course, this was exacerbated by the dark. I ended up starting my run around 2:30am. By the time I ran this course, several of my team members had already run it, so they were able to give me some hints at what to watch out for – the first couple of miles were really muddy and technical with rocks and some drop-offs, but after that, it was flatter and a more packed down trail. 

  • Mile 1 – 15:19
  • Mile 2 – 16:03
  • Mile 3 – 15:14
  • Mile 4 – 12:23
  • Last .45 – 14:16 
My last .45 was probably a bit shorter than what I have listed because I forgot to turn off my Garmin when I finished and ended up walking around a little bit before I remembered to hit the button, but it’s close enough.

The beginning of the run was definitely harder than I was expecting and was making me re-think the whole trail running thing, but after I got through the first mile, I felt much better and after looking at the elevation profile again, I can see why I struggled a bit (beyond the obvious mud and darkness). I was able to pick up some speed after mile 2 when I stopped having to climb over random rocks and watch out for the 3 foot drops, but I think I could have gone even faster if I could’ve seen where I was going! I finished in a little over an hour (1:05:23 on my Garmin) and then headed back to camp to get some sleep. 

In the morning, I wandered around the campground some more to check out the other team’s sites and see how bad the water / mud had gotten for the other teams. 


Tune in tomorrow for part II!