The Weekend that Wouldn't End!

This weekend was amazing.  And long!  In some ways as I sit here and type this Monday evening it still feels like it hasn't ended.  We've been constantly on the go since last Thursday.  And it looked a little like this.  First was the Ragnar Wasatch Back race as a member of an ultra team.  It's something I've been wanting to do for at least two years now, but never really thought I'd ever be fit enough to do.  But with my recent training schedule and the goals I've been hitting during this race season so far, when a friend reached out asking for a runner for her brother's "ultra" team for Wasatch Back, I accepted without hesitation, praying silently that the team would be an easygoing one and understanding of my slower pace.  (As it turned out, everyone on the team ran a pace within 30 seconds of each other in recent races, so we were on a very level playing field.)

Thursday afternoon I left home and took the muchkins to Hillary's house where we treated the Platt family to a lovely dinner at the Banana Leaf and then went back to the house to try and sleep.  But as is usual for me before a big relay I was pretty wound up and didn't fall asleep until almost midnight, and since I had to get up at 4:15, that really didn't seem like much sleep, but it's still twice as much as I got before last year's Wasatch Back, so I'll take it.

 Most of the team met each other for the first time, the morning of the race at Tom's house.  From left: Anahi, Tom (our captain), me (of course), Jon, Christine and Jared.  It turned out to be a great team of really solid runners, which is good because when you're running twice as much as everyone else, most of the focus has to be on the running.  There simply isn't down time for socializing.  Or showers.  Or meals.  You're literally recovering from one run while prepping for the next.

 Seeing the green bib suddenly made it all sink in and seem real.  There was no arguing with that color.  I was really going to run six legs of this thing.

 As previously mentioned, there is hardly any down time when you're running six times in under 30 hours.  We were joking hat we didn't even have time for pictures because you're always the "on" van.  So we grabbed the camera took a few obligatory selfies.

 This cute lady is JeNae, her husband and I served in the same mission and he's remained one of my dearest friends from the mission through the years.  In fact, he and Travis have become quite good friends and JeNae has become one of my favorite people.  She was volunteering one of the overnight shifts at an exchange up on the hill while her husband, sister and two brothers-in-law and various other family and friends were running.

 Here's the one picture of the view I took the entire race.  This was on the way up Guardsman's Pass during our final legs of the race.

And look who I ran into while killing some time at the finish line!  JeNae's husband, James, who was celebrating his 35th birthday by running 7.5 miles up Jordanelle on his final leg. But he was a champ and finished.  So proud of him.  Actually I ran into several people I knew at the race, friends from the mission, neighbors (Michael Hays), former team mates and some of my running "friends" that I only know through this community and had never met in person before, including a few team mates from the EPIC relay I'll be doing in August.

Anyway so my six legs (Legs 6 & 12) totaled 29 miles and the final 3.3 were up and down a mountain that was steep and slow going up and treacherous coming down.  Steep switch back, single track and extremely technical trail.  I bit it twice on the way down and ended up ever so slightly bruised & bloody and extremely dirty!

 Team Ultra Crazy at the finis line.  We finished very strong and everyone went away with a positive impression of the weekend.  The pros of doing an ultra are that you never get bored.  And frankly there's not enough time in between your legs to get stiff or sore or obsess about how tired you are.  You're always going.  On the down side there's no time for socializing.  Or showers.  Or meals.  Or sleep, you just have to mentally prepare yourself before hand to keep going no matter how fatigued and hungry you get. And yet wen asked if I'd do it again, I say "YES" in a heartbeat.  There's such satisfaction that comes from pushing yourself to your limit and conquering what you once thought was impossible.

Besides, who doesn't love Ragnar blink for the person and the car, that's reason enough to keep doig these races when ever and however possible.

So as if not sleeping for three straight nights wasn't bad enough (don't ask about Sunday night, even though I was exhausted, it was rough) I got up at 3:30 this morning to do my girl, Malia, a favor and caravan with her up to Grand Teton to help her reserve a camping spot for her family vacation this week as her parents and siblings weren't able to come up until later this evening, and this being the fourth of July holiday week, they figured all the spots would be gone very early.  So after a two hour detour (bad directions, mass frustration, don't ask) we finally made it to the campground around 10am and got a good site reserved for her family.  It's good we did too because by the time her family got there around 5:30 the campground was completely full.  Anyway, after we finally got the camp spot, we squeezed into one vehicle and headed up to Yellowstone to play for the rest of the day.  After a couple of hours there, we had an extremely fatigued group of kids (who had been up since 4:15 am) complaining and whining.  Parker had a headache, Gideon had a bad splinter and screamed loudly that I was hurting him when I tried to take it out (I'm sure the hundreds of people at the castle geyser thought I was beating my son) and you'd have thought Scarlett's legs were going to fall off with as much as she was complaining.  But somehow, they all survived. (Ice cream seems to fix everything.)  Anyway, I consider it a successful, though long day, since we didn't arrive home until almost 10pm.  I'm definitely looking forward to sleeping tonight and a very low key day tomorrow.  Still it was a fun adventure I'm glad I had the opportunity to force my kids to participate in. They'll thank me someday, right?