Ragnar Northwest Passage

It was 3:30 a.m. and I was running alone on the back roads of Whidbey Island, following a blinking red light clipped to the backside of a runner who was some undetermined distance ahead of me. A van came up behind me and slowed briefly.

“Need anything?”

Do I need anything? Yes. I need to crank out my last 6 miles of the race so I can crawl into the back of that van and go back to sleep. I need a beer. I need someone else to be out here…

“Nope. I’m good. Maybe some water in a few miles.”

And so my support van slowly drove away into the darkness. I tried to look at my watch in the bouncing light of my headlamp with little luck. Oh well. It made no difference now. In a 187 mile relay race with 11 other runners, my pace on the last few miles of my commitment wasn’t going to have much effect. I just had to finish. I set off to catch the runner ahead of me and wondered where I would see my team again with the water they promised me. I decided to pass the time by composing this article in my head.

Some of Our Van Graffiti in Artful Shadow

It started as a whim, as most adventures do. In scanning the calendar of events in the Northwest for 2010, I paused on the Ragnar Relay Northwest Passage. I’d heard of the Ragnar Relays, of course, but never considered running one.

I dashed off a quick email to some of my running friends. Should we try this?

Not long after I had a beer with an old college friend of mine who once passed me in a half marathon while pushing his two boys in a jogging stroller. A friend of a friend joined us. And so it happened that over a couple of adult beverages, we hatched the plan and committed to forming a relay team. The conversation went something like this:

“I know some runners.”

“Me too.”

Typical Ragnar Fare: A Vuvuzuala playing gorilla volunteer.

“We can easily get nine more people. Let’s do it.”

The crew of SuperVan after the race. 

Since it started in Utah in 2003, the Ragnar Relay series has grown to include events in New York, California, Arizona, and Florida, among other places. The premise is simple: A team of 12 runners separated into two vans. Each van is responsible for 6 consecutive legs of the race before handing off to the other half of the team. Repeat three times and when all is said and done most teams will have spent more than a day running over 180 miles with little sleep, questionable dietary choices, and some serious van funk. We have four kids who regularly road trip with us in our van, and I’ve never smelled anything like what our Ragnar team did to that poor thing.

The author wearing the mandatory pink driver's wig

I like to imagine that most Ragnar teams are made up of friends and acquaintances. Cobbled together from running clubs. Over the next months, ours would ebb and flow, lose a founding member to injury, and settle with me leading a team I barely knew. Heck, I didn’t even meet most of the members of our team until the day of the race. And something tells me this is pretty typical.

Robin and Katrina at the 2nd Exchange

What I don’t think is typical is for such a patchwork team to be so good! The teammates I brought along were, let’s say, somewhere in their forties or fifties. All strong runners and all veterans of all sorts of crazy sporting adventures. I knew they were game for the endurance. It turns out the others who somehow got hooked up with us (friends of friends of friends? Where’s Kevin Bacon in all of this?) were in their twenties and fast. I mean fast. Luckily, they were also all reliable and fun to be around. When putting together a Ragnar team of your own, which you should do, make personality the number one variable when selecting runners. The second variable should be: “has access to a van.” The third: “knows someone who lives along the course.” Running ability should be way down the list. You aren’t going to win.

Being surprised by the team’s overall pace was delightful at first, until I realized it meant that our van would get little rest. We had barely rolled out of the van for some sleep between our legs when a text message came in and woke me up.

“Scott’s on the last leg. You have about 30 minutes before he’s there.”

It took me 29 minutes to get up, get running clothes on, find my reflective vest and headlamp, and stumble to the exchange chute. It took me those same 29 minutes to calculate that our second van was averaging around 7 minutes per mile. Our team averaged a little over 8 minutes per mile for the whole race. I’ll let you figure out how our van was contributing to that average.

And at the 30 minute mark since receiving the text message, by friend Scott (the only person I knew in the second van) ran into the exchange and pulled my shorts down around my ankles. I was seriously too tired to care, and stumbled out of the chute and onto my last run of the race.

I have a fair collection of “Finisher” shirts in my drawers at home, but I seldom wear them. This one I will wear. My friend Robin reports that in the days after the relay, while doing a short run, he overheard someone talking about his shirt and saying something to the effect of :“He must be crazy to do that race!”

You don’t have to be crazy. But at 3:30 a.m. on the dark rural roads of Whidbey Island, with your support van nowhere to be found and 5 miles left to go before you can take the running shoes off for the last time, being a little crazy helps. Truly crazy is enduring all of it for 25 hours, looking at your teammates and committing to reloading and doing it again next year.

They have a Ragnar Relay in Vegas, you know. Anyone?

Visit the Ragnar Website at http://www.ragnarrelay.com/