The Larkins Family: Ragnar Del Sol 2016

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Ragnar Del Sol 2016

Last weekend I completed my second Ragnar Relay. I wrote about my first time running Ragnar last year, here. This year I knew Ragnar was going to be 5 days after I ran my full marathon so I didn't want to over commit myself. I signed up for shorter legs and although I felt pretty good and probably could have done more, it was nice to not have the pressure of any long legs. This year my sister joined us as well as my other sister's boyfriend and his friend. Justin and my brother in-law were our two other van members although we actually used a Honda Pilot instead of a van. Thursday night we got the van all decorated. Our team name was Scrambled Legs and Achin' again but the guys wanted something ridiculous on our car so we added a blow-up whale. Driving on freeways with that whale was interesting but she survived. Everly named the whale Starr. We were in Van 2 this year so we started our legs out in Tonopah. It was hot and dusty by the time we started Saturday afternoon but I was happy with how fast I ran (8:43/mi). After our first legs were finished out in Surprise we grabbed Subway and headed home to my house to sleep for a couple of hours. My second run was at like 3:00 AM in the Happy Valley area of North Phoenix and I ran even faster (8:34/mi). After we were all done with our second legs we had our largest down time and were able to get coffee and bagels and rest at my sister's house. It worked out really nice and actually felt like we had a good amount of time. My last leg was out in Fountain Hills and was so hard. It was only 3.5 miles but those were the biggest hills I have ever run. I still managed an acceptable pace (9:37) and passed a bunch of people so I was happy. I was actually never passed by anyone on all 3 of my legs which never happened to me last year so that was cool. By the time Justin ran the last leg Saturday night I was done. I just wanted to go get my babies and go to bed! Besides the incident shortly after we started where we took a wrong turn and almost got kicked out of the race, Ragnar 2016 was a success and I had a lot of fun. We ended up finishing 40th out of 106 teams in the Mixed Open division (men and women of any age). Can't wait to do it again next year!