Team Optimus Prime Rocked Ragnar Northwest Passage!

I am so psyched to have participated in last week’s Ragnar Relay Northwest Passage! It was an amazing experience, one that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.

In case you don’t know, Ragnar puts on a series of relays, similar in distance to the famous Hood To Coast Relay Race in Oregon. This particular race started in Blaine, WA (on the Canadian border) and ran around the beautiful Puget Sound, across Deception Pass to Langley, WA (on the southern end of Whidbey Island). The total distance was 187 miles that are broken up into 36 segments.

Whidbey Island on Saturday morning. The sunrise was beautiful and boosted everyone's spirits!

Most people, at least most normal people, find 11 friends to run with them. But I’m not a normal guy so I found myself on Team Optimus Prime (TOP)—a “mixed ultra” team consisting of 3 crazy women and 3 equally crazy men. That means that instead of averaging about 16 miles per person, our team averaged about 32 miles per person over the course of our 32 hours and 25 minutes of running! Like I said, we aren’t normal at all.

TOP—The Beginnings

When we originally started thinking about running this crazy race, we weren’t harboring any thoughts about being an “ultra” team. But as with many things, the initial interest in the race waned, some people got injured, some people couldn’t afford the trip. Whatever the reasons were, we ended up with six hard core, committed runners and three awesome volunteers on this crazy journey:

BEST. TEAM. EVER. Brandon, Ryan, Lindsay, Tara, Mac, and Sharla. Team Optimus Prime!

The Race

For me, this event wasn’t about a race per se. This event was all about meeting some pretty awesome people that have been instrumental to my successes both as a blogger and to helping me find the “real me” that was lurking inside the “old me.”

I knew that I could run my 3 legs totaling 32 miles. Not finishing wasn’t an option. I was a little bit worried about my foot and physical fitness levels but I knew that I could hobble to the end if I had to. I also knew that we weren’t competing for anything and that the only team goal we had was to finish and have an awesome time. We definitely accomplished all of those things.

As far as my running though, I managed to complete my legs of 12 (daytime), 10 (pitch black), and 12 (morning) miles in 5 hours and 5 minutes of time on my feet which put me just under 9 minutes/mile for my legs. I was very happy with this pace based on my level of fitness and the amount of running that I’ve been doing lately. (I went from 160 miles in May to 13 in June and about 60 (including Ragnar) in July due to my foot injury).

My favorite times during the race didn’t actually come during my running legs. I had an awesome time getting to know my team mates in the early stages and then making (at least I’d like to think) life-long friends as the race unfolded. Here are some of the highlights of the weekend:

Passing the "baton"

Yoga in the parking lot.

Followed by some pushups!

Killing Decepticons—AKA passing runners on the road.

Contemplating Dave's Killer Raisin Bread...while sweating buckets!

Muscles and temporary tatoos

Running with exceptional posture.

Finding that final mile marker.

Dancing a jig?

Nothing Ventured

I was a little bit nervous heading into the weekend. The only team mate that I’d ever met in person was Brandon it was only for a few hours in Vegas. What would it be like to spend a whole weekend in a van full of strangers? On the way up to Seattle on Thursday, many questions ran through my head…Would they like me? What would we talk about? What if I wasn’t fast enough for them? What if Sharla was an axe murderer (or a doula)? What if Tara hits on me? Does Ryan really not have a cell phone or a bank account? Can Lindsay really do a triple lutz AND distinguish between native and invasive blackberries?

All that uncertainty left me feeling, well, a little uncertain. And I’m not much of a risk taker either. So I was a little bit out of my comfort zone going into this whole deal. But you know what? This weekend was perfect in every aspect. I had an amazing experience. One that I never would have had if I hadn’t started blogging, running, or living life the way it’s supposed to be lived.

And that’s my biggest lesson from the weekend of Ragnar. If you never take a risk, you’ll never gain anything. This weekend, I gained friendship, confidence, and some new ideas about what I want to do going forward. I’ll write more about those things later, I’m sure. But for now, I’m putting Team Optimus Prime to bed—at least until next year!