When Bois Forte decided to put together a team for the 2013 Ragnar Great River relay, I was asked to be the Fortune Bay representative. This was partly due to my reputation for running and partly because no one else volunteered. Rae Villebrun was the captain and organizer of team Running Wild Through the Wilderness and did an excellent job of logistics and communication throughout.
We had some turnover on our roster in the weeks leading up to the race, including one person who dropped out the week of the race. This lead to me taking both the 8th and 9th runner positions, effectively turning it into a Ragnar Ultra. I decided to just do the back-to-backs three times (see the segment maps after the jump), for a grand total of 36.6 miles. I was a little worried when the Ragnar guide listed the segments as very hard, very hard, very hard, very hard, easy and moderate (which should have been “hard” in my opinion).
My Garmin had all kinds of cool stats from this event:
- 5:29:58 overall, for an average pace of 9:01
- 4,675 ft of total elevation gain
- 5,130 estimated calories burned
- Fastest split – 7:35
- Slowest split – 12:48 (walked half a hill)
- Split breakdown: 3 sevens, 16 eights, 15 nines, 2 “others”
As you can see from the elevation chart, this course had some serious hills. I had to walk for part of the last hill in segment 9 (my slowest split) and the long downhill after the peak was almost as painful (in a different way). I also walked part of the hill at the end of segment 33, which was my least favorite part of the entire relay. Thankfully Megan was there with me for that part – many, many thanks to her teammate Yaniha for the surprise water bottles too.
Even though this was my first Ragnar, I could tell right away that people are what make this event what it is. I hadn’t met any of my teammates in real life before Friday, but we had an awesome team. I really appreciate all the work that Rae and John put into organizing our group and thanks to my van two partners Amy, Melissa, Nikki and John for sharing their Target snacks, driving us everywhere and providing support throughout the relay. And cheers to all of the van one runners too – you did great. Running Wild Through the Wilderness kicked ass!
