"It's when things get rough and you don't quit that success comes." - Unknown

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

It's the middle of March. My first race of the year is next month. Ragnar Del Sol. I've done a little running, but I haven't been out on long runs yet. I'm actually not too worried about that race. However, in May, I have my first triathlon of the year. Have I trained for said race? Nope. Like I said, I've been out on some runs, but no long runs. And have I been swimming? H no! What did I sign myself up for!?

What's on the schedule so far this year? Ragnar and a 5K in April, triathlon in May, triathlon in June and a half marathon in June. And that's just what I'm currently signed up for. I know there will be more. The same group that is doing Ragnar in April is planning on doing another one in September, both in California. Which should be interesting since I've only done the Vegas and Wasatch Back Ragnar Relays. I'm also toying with the idea of doing the Tour de Cure in June, which means I will probably end up doing it. That takes care of 3 of the 5 weekends for the month. I may as well try and find something for the other two weeks and just make it a month of races! But I'm not nearly as prepared as I should be for the races I'm already signed up for, it just worries me. What have I gotten myself into!?

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

In a rut

I feel like I've been in a rut for the past few months. My running hasn't felt like it's been up to par lately. But if I'm being honest, I don't think it's ever really been up to par. I call myself a runner because I've done multiple races and I usually go running multiple times a week. But I don't feel like a runner. I could be much better. If I pushed myself. But that's the thing, I don't push myself. I run the same route each week. It takes me the same amount of time each run. No better, sometimes worse. I often stop and walk if I start to feel winded, when I should actually be pushing myself to be better. I feel like this is also related to my life as well. I go through the motions, but I want so much more out of it. I need to push myself to be better. Go outside my comfort zone and try new things that test my limits. Who knows, maybe something great will happen. But there's always that fear that I will stumble and fail and be unable to recover.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Peoria

In November I took a week off work and went to Peoria to visit my brother and his cute family. It was little Ezra's 2nd birthday and I was lucky enough to go visit and be there for his birthday. My mom was there at the same time, she had stopped in Kirksville to visit Jeff and Holli and then joined us in Peoria. It was a great time. Warning, lots of pictures. I couldn't decide on only a few.


I just liked the name of this place.


Cute chloe and me at dinner.


The awesome cake Mel made for Ezra's birthday. Very impressive.


Yeah! Double hand that cake. He was so excited for this cake. Loved it!


We were driving to a park and saw this white squirrel. Have you ever seen a white squirrel before?


I just liked this picture.


This park had a monster made out of tires. It was awesome! Chloe climbed across it and made it to the head.


Chloe looking for treasures.


Ezra enjoying the slide.


We were driving home, looking at the large houses in one area and stopped to walk on a little trail covered in leaves. Love these two!


Ezra and I walking down the path.


Me and Chloe


Playing in the leaves.


Love this picture! He's so happy!


I love the fall!


Ezra riding his 3-wheeler outside.


Playing doctor. Ezra laid there and Chloe examined him. He would tell her where he hurt and she would fix him up. So cute!


My last day! Getting ready to go to the airport. Thanks Brad and Mel for letting me come out and stay for a week. Love you guys!

Las Vegas Ragnar 2011

Back in October I had the opportunity to run the Las Vegas Ragnar Relay race. This is my third year in a row running this race. It's great! It's October and it's still 80 degrees during the day and about 65 at night. Love those night runs! I was runner 1 this time. I'm not used to being the first runner. It was a new experience for me. But it was still fun!


Going through safety training before starting the race. These are the kind of things you see when running Ragnar. This team's name was Smooth Porno Jams. And yes, they ran in those outfits. Awesome.


Another guys that has shaved the Ragnar symbol into his hair. Saw something similar when running the Wasatch Back. I think the guy behind him looks like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.


The starting line.


Here I am at the starting line, waiting to get started.


And we're off!

They altered the course a little this year and the first 11 legs of the race were non-support. Which meant, runners in the van couldn't get out to support the runner out on the road. The course was altered and it was on a two lane highway, so there wasn't anywhere for the vans to pull off. We had to toss water bottles across the road and our runners would pick them up for a drink and then throw them back to the car.

Here are some of the vehicles we were running with for our legs.




This lady was hilarious. She was one of the traffic controllers I guess. As we're driving past her (it was a little congested at this point, we were coming up on an exchange) she says, "Cops are coming, don't do anything stupid now."


And here's the van for the Smooth Porno Jams


Oh these guys....They were interesting. We were with them most of the first leg, before passing off to van 2 and they were drinking the whole time! You could smell it on them when they got out of their van to support their runner. They gave us a good laugh, that's for sure. They had a Winnebago and my friend needed to use the bathroom, so she asked them if she could use theirs. At first the guy in the clown outfit (he was drunk) told her yes, but then she was told no by another one of their team members. The guy in the dress came to our van and told on of the guys, "She needs to pee, you need to get her a (insert explitive) sheet so she can go outside!" Yeah, they were interesting to say the least.


Here I am after my last leg. It was listed as very hard. It was 6.7 miles of uneven, rocky terrain on a dirt road. It was at 3:30 in the morning, pitch black, no street lamps as it was away from the road where the vans were driving. It was a non-support leg. All I had was the light from my head lamp to help me. There were several times where I almost face planted because of stepping on a rock that I didn't see. I was pretty excited to be done with that portion.


This is what happens when I run sometimes.


Our team at the finish line!


Jessica, Emma and me at the finish line, with our medals. Since we ran the Wasatch Back and the Vegas relay in the same year, we got an additionl Saints and Sinners medal. It was a great race with wonderful people.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Dirty Girls Do Have More Fun

Maybe one of these days I'll get to a point where I'm not 2 months behind on my blogging.

In September I was able to run the Dirty Dash with my little sister. We tried to talk our other sister into it, but she had just had a baby the month before and it wasn't going to work out for her. We did this race last year and It. Was. Awesome! This year they had promised more mud and they delivered! Leah and I were maybe halfway through the race and looked at each other and said we were already dirtier at this point than we were at the end of the race last year. The mud was everywhere!

I had decided that after this race, I was donating my shoes. It had been about 7 years since I got these shoes and they had long since passed their limit on mileage. Here's a picture of our shoes before the race. That's right, my sister bought Keds for this race. The sad thing is, those little keds had more traction than my running shoes on one of the mud hills we climbed up. And if you look closely, you can see the holes starting to form on my shoes. It was a good thing this was their last race. They would not have survived another race, probably would have fallen apart while I was running.


Here are our shoes. Notice how white Leah's are? Yeah, not so much after the race.


Here we are before the race. It fell on Courtney's birthday. We had to do something for her since she wasn't racing, so we made shirts!


And on the back, Dirty Girls Have More Fun. Because what fun is this race if you don't embrace the mud?


Here we are coming to the finish!


This was right before jumping into the mud pit.


And here we are after our leap in the mud! Covered, head to toe in mud. It was so great! The obstacles included: jumping over bales of hay, crawling through giant tubes with mud in the bottom, traversing over army walls, running through a swamp, climbing over a giant net, going through a ditch filled with muddy water with tubes across the top that you had to climb over or duck under, a rope swing, balance beams, running through tires, climbing up a muddy hill with a rope, the giant slip n' slide and of course the mud pit to finish it off. Would I do this again? ABSOLUTELY!! Hopefully my dirty dash partner will join me again next year. And maybe we can talk some other family members into the awesomeness.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

My New Ride

I've been wanting a road bike for over a year now. I did my first triathlon last year and ever since I borrowed my friend's bike for the race, I've sort of had the fever. I had saved my little pennies and before my brother left for medical school, I bought this beauty. I had to have my brother, the avid rider, come with me to make this purchase so that I didn't buy something that was wrong for me. He sure helped me! A guy in his ward was working and I got hooked up with all sorts of stuff. It's just too bad I didn't get out on a ride with Jeff before he left. But maybe now I can get some practicing in and next summer I might be able to keep up with him. I love it! This is Ruby...



I haven't been out too many times yet, but when I have been out, it's been great. We were in Bear Lake a couple weeks ago, the last trip of the season. We were closing up the cabin for the winter. My dad and I took our bikes and we got out on a ride. It was beautiful! The fall colors, the lake, it was great. I had to send this picture to my brothers to prove that I actually ride my bike.



This was the view on our ride, love it!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Wasatch Back 2011

Wow! It's been a long time since I've posted. I guess I need to work on being better at keeping this thing updated. *Warning* This is the longest post ever.

In June I had the opportunity to run the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay. I've done the Vegas relay for the past two years, but have never done the Wasatch Back. I was a little nervous about this because there are so many more hills than in Vegas. Correction: mountains, not hills. This is Utah after all. But I love the Ragnar Relay series and this year I had the opportunity to run it with my brother, Jeff, which was awesome! This was great, because just over a month after the race, he left for Missouri to start Medical School. This was a great opportunity for us to spend some time together before he left for his new adventure.

We began our journey by driving to Logan. We got to Logan around 9:30 or ten the night before the race, but had to stop at the store to get food for our 30 plus hour time together. We got into the store and this is what we saw:



Cache Valley was in the spirit of Ragnar

Our start time was 5:45 am! That's early. I'm used to starting around 11:30 in the morning and having plenty of time to get ready and get to the start in the morning. Well, we got to where we were spending the night around 11:30 and had to be up around 4:00 am in order to get ready, get to the start line and go through safety instructions. Our sleeplessness started a little earlier than anticipated. We got to the starting line the next morning and the fun was about to begin.


This guy had Ragnar spirit


Jeff with the starting line behind him, getting ready to start his first Ragnar Relay!


We saw this van on our way back to the car, after our first runner headed out. Boom Shaka Laka! We had to take a picture of this because it's a phrase used often in our family.

And we were off!


Me, getting ready to start my first leg.


Jeff getting ready for his first leg


And we can't leave out the infamous port-a-potty picture.

For those of you who don't know how the Ragnar Relay works, I'll give you the run down. Each team has 12 runners and each runner runs 3 legs. Or, if you are an ultra team, you only have 6 runners and each runner goes double the distance. We had a team of 12. Each team has two vans, with 6 runners in each van. Van 1 starts the race and each runner runs one leg and then van 1 passes off to van 2, so you go through all 12 runners and then start over. While van 1 is running, van 2 can rest, eat, sleep and vice versa. So, van 2 was able to sleep in and meet us at exchange 6, where we pass off to them and then we can rest. While you are running or in the van that is running, the van plays leap frog with their runner. The runner lets the van know how often they want support; food or water. The van sends their runner off and then drives up the route a mile or however long the runner wanted to go until they need support. Someone gets out of the van and gives the runner water and it continues with each runner. I was runner 3 and Jeff was runner 5. So, we both got to see the other run and give support to them. Well, I had warned my team that my brother was an animal when it comes to running. He. Is. Fast. Apparently I didn't put as much emphasis on this warning as I should have. His first leg was 7.5 miles of uphill, uneven, rocky terrain. We sent him off and it took us a while to get back in the car to get on the road and be able to support him. It was a good 10 minutes after he left that we got in the car. By this time I was stressing because I knew he was already a good 1.5 miles into his route and we were going to have a hard time getting ahead of him. Well....it was more than difficult to do this. Like I said, it was a rough road, even for driving, let alone running. It was through Avon pass, a dirt road, barely wide enough for one way traffic as well as runners. There was a line of cars in front of us, trying to support their runners. So, when one car stopped, the entire line of cars was stopped. I was getting so worried as we were creeping along in the car, thinking my brother was going to hate me because I talked him into doing this race and then his first and hardest leg, he got no support. He was probably thinking he had the worst sister ever. Needless to say, Jeff beat the van to the next exchange. He went on a 7.5 mile leg, listed as very hard, with an incline of 1200 feet, with no support! He's a machine! We were about half a mile from the exchange and we finally had to tell the next runner that he better just get out and run to the next exchange or Jeff would be waiting for 20 minutes. And this is what we saw when we finally made it to the exchange:


He was so happy to see the van finally coming up the trail.


Back in the van.

We passed off to van 2 and this was the view we had. So great!


I love Utah!

And then we were back to running.


Getting ready to start my second leg


During leg 2


Brotherly support


Jeff getting read to start his second leg. If you were going to be running between 7:30pm and 6:30am (If I remember correctly), you had to don your reflective gear; vest, headlamp and tail light. Here he is with his reflective gear, ready to go.


Speeding through his second leg. He doesn't even look tired.


And he's done with leg two. Beat the sunset, didn't even have to turn his headlamp on.

After our second leg, we were able to get some rest. One of the people in our van had relatives that lived semi-near the course. They let us crash on their floor and we were able to get a solid 2-3 hours of sleep. Much better sleeping on the floor of a house than on the grass or in the car. Then it was back out for our final leg. Our final leg started around 3:30 in the morning.


Jeff paying me back with the port-a-potty picture.


In my reflective gear for my last leg.


My last leg was my hardest and there were plenty of hills for me. This was one of them.


This is what I ran up. Doesn't look steep, but it was!


Jeff getting ready to start his final leg.


Waiting for the hand-off.


And he's off, on his final leg.


The final steps of his last leg! That guy behind him, back in the distance....Yeah, Jeff blew past him. He's so fast!


The exchange. They did leap frog for their exchange.


And he's done with his first Ragnar!


Our first Ragnar complete.


Passing off to van 2. Our exchanges were pretty much the best.

After passing off to van 2, we had a few hours to wait till we all crossed the finish line together. We drove to the finish line and enjoyed looking at all the cars and their creative names and decorations. Here were a few of them.







Here we are with our matching tatoos.


The Power Ragnars!


Morphin time!


We made it! 192 miles. Run, Drive, Sleep? Repeat.

This was a great race and I was so glad I had the opportunity to run it with my brother! Thanks, Jeff, for coming with me and making it a great experience. Everyone was in awe of him and his mad running skills. At one point my friend Jessica (in our van) got a text from her sister in van 2 that said, "I cannot believe Melinda's brother. Holy shit he is fast." I think that sums it up quite nicely. And it's very true. I'm excited to run the Vegas relay in October and get my Saints and Sinners medal for running the Wasatch Back and Vegas relay in the same year.