In our van was Michelle Taft, Teneil Watson, Dave Crockett, Russ, Me and at the last minute my good friend Amy Leiseth finally got to jump into our last spot. She had been waiting for months for someone to get injured and drop out so she could run with us again. Lucky for her we had a drop out just a week before the race. Lucky for us she was all trained and ready and wasn't snagged up by a rival team before hand!
Dave Crockett, Michelle Taft, Russ Simons, Marci Simons, Amy Leiseth, Teneil Watson
Van 1 started at 8:40 am - we got to sleep in and meet at 11 am to start decorating our van! We were TeamNipgaard - thanks Jordan Romans for coming up with our unbeatable logo! And Jon Law for sponsoring our team shirts! Russ and I worked on some large flags that we mounted to each of our team cars. They were so great because they made it easy to pick out our support car amongst the other 650 cars along the course.
After painting we stopped by Amy's work to pick her up and get on our way - we bought subway and stopped for the ice we had forgotten. We barely made it through the road construction and traffic going up Ogden Canyon. We only had about 15 minutes to spare at our first major exchange point. But it was enough time to get in a few "spontaneous" pictures.
We saw some friends from the ward who were also running the relay - just on different teams. My friend Sonya Day called out, "Sister Simons!" as she saw me across the way........ok maybe I just consider he my friend and she considers me some old fogie that she sees at church and happens to talk to about the young sport of running every once in a while! At least Heather Ashby knew me by my first name.
I don't think Wade recognized Michelle in the exchange chute - even with the matching team shirt" He almost ran right past her.
Our first legs were our only HOT runs. Luckily after last year I came prepared with a super-soaker gun and a large sponge for drenching our runners. As we leap-frogged our runners I decided other people might like to be hit with my water gun as well......I caught them all off guard...I think they appreciated it though.....or at least no one flipped me off??@?@
There was a guy running that looked so sweaty and hot, I thought I would cool him down by squeezing water from our large sponge onto him. I waited for him to approach and then said, as I held out the sponge, "This is for you...because you look so HOT" He replied "Thanks, that felt good." As I walked away, I felt strangely awkward about the whole interchange...and I began to realize that maybe my voice came out a little more sultry than it should have. AND I HAD ACTUALLY SOUNDED LIKE I WAS COMING ONTO THE GUY!
Some other guy along the route tried to rip the water bottle out of my hands as I held it out for Amy who was coming up behind him. Luckily I had a death grip on that water! No way was I going to share it with some poor dehydrated runner with a loser team that wasn't giving him the proper kind of support.
On our journey Amy Leiseth finally learned that running shorts have built in bloomers for a reason.......and went commando for the first time. Which apparently kept Russ entertained enough that he had no problem continuing a string of commando jokes for the remainder of our journey. Then Amy conveniently gave every last ounce of energy she had on her last 7 mile run and convincingly tripped into Russ' arms as she crossed the finish line of leg 32. We're so glad you kept training even when it looked like you would never get a spot on the team!
Teneil got the poop scared out of her as she was chased by 2 wolves during her 10 mile run in the middle of the night - except that Ragnar had no porta potties set up along the way (only at the exchange points) so she had to hold it in for about 5 miles! Sorry we were so slow to understand your sponge squeezing charades/mime technique. We eventually caught on and gave you the support you needed.
#1 the leg I gave her apparently climbs one of the four summits of the race....and
#2 Michelle has been secretly training to improve her time by more than a minute each mile! Even if you felt like you were going to die after climbing Hogback Summit it was worth it (right?)You didn't stop and we were all so excited to see you finish that though climb! No sandbagging next year - are you trying to get us penalized?
Dave, "Have you Ragnared yet?" Crockett, was our guardian and motivator throughout the race......well at least he tried to motivate......if you count comments like:
"Michelle, you're so much faster than we thought you'd be........errrr.......uhhhhh......and we expected you to be really fast!"
and "Good luck with the knee Teneil!"
He rocked it on the Ragnar leg! We were so proud of you. Thanks for joining out team and spending the weekend with us. We hope you'll join us again.
Russ was the only other one who had to run in the pouring rain like I did...and he did it while running at top speeds down an mountain with a 5% grade. I'm glad you wanted to train with me and come along for the journey of this years race. And I guess we weren't to couple-ish so as to gross everyone else out.
As for me I loved the whole experience, the incredible climb into Snow Basin, the middle of the night run, the 1.5 hours of sleep, running 5 miles in the pouring rain and spending 2 days chasing my best friends down small-town highways as we each ran our hearts out - just for fun. As the last runner of our team, I especially liked being the one to take the entire team across the finish this year. After 28 hours and 27 minutes and 13 seconds, it felt like a huge accomplishment.
Lets run together again guys!
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