Scenes From Leg #2...

I've already talked about our first legs for Van 1 at Ragnar Colorado. That's only a third of the story.

After we got food and headed to exchange 12, we got a little rest in the van. By rest I don't actually mean sleep, we mostly just hung out in the van and attempted to sleep but seemed to keep talking.

Jerry was convinced that Kelsey had done time in the military because she had no trouble sleeping in the van. Gotta love that she slept in her safety vest.

Scotty also got some sleep in the van with his safety gear on too.

There weren't a lot of pics from the nighttime legs because they would look like this...

Not very exciting.

Van 2 handed off to us and Jerry headed out in the dark for his second leg. Kelsey and Patti followed Jerry and before I knew it it was almost my turn. We got to exchange 15 with a few minutes to spare, luckily I had a port-o-potty break at exchange 14 because 15 had no facilities. Now that could have not been good.

It was getting cold in the mountains, and I was insanely nervous about running in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. I managed to almost get run over by another team's van while we were waiting for Patti, so that calmed my nerves a little. Before I knew it Patti was there handing the slap bracelet to me and I was off. Decked out in my safety vest, blinky light, two headlamps (one on. Y head, one in my hand) and a glow stick on my handheld water bottle, I tried to bring as much light with me as possible.

I was booking it. For the first two miles I was running at the same pace as the Brookhaven 5k. Since this lef was 5.9 miles I knew that pace was not sustainable, but I couldn't slow down. Fear is a wonderful motivator and running in the dark in the middle of the night, while it was a little exhilarating, it was pretty scary.

At about mile two, the worlds best route supporter meet up with me on his bike.

Craig, not dressed in these awesome pants, came to keep me company. I kept telling him that I was dying and that I was having trouble making myself slow down my pace. Basically, I ended up walking up some of the uphill parts of my leg and than not slowing down much on the rest.

It was so nice to have someone to chat with, I never run alone and I love having someone to talk to. It was pretty beautiful and peaceful in the dark. After a while I saw what I thought was another runner ahead of us. Turned out that he was not another runner, he was some guy out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

Craig was still with me and the van was there when I passed him. They passed him in the van long before I got there and they never would have let me pass him all by myself (I had the best teammates) but it still scared the crap out of me.

After that Craig turned back and I headed off for my last mile or so on my own. I ended up running 5.9 miles in under 52 minutes, and was so happy to hang off to Scotty at the exchange.

Scotty busted out his 4.5 miles or so in no time flat and the Ro was up. Scotty was gonna run some with her, and they got to run my a guy with long blonde dreadlocks that Ro said had to be a zombie. So weird that we passed two random guys on two nighttime legs of the race.

Ro handed off to van 2 and then we headed to exchange 24 to rest up for our final legs. Ro, Jerry and I headed into the gym at the school the exchange was at and tried to get some sleep.

We didn't get much sleep but Ro modeled her ninja outfit.

Leg 2 was a success because we made up some ground and finally started seeing other runners and not just bums and zombies.

More about leg 3 to come.

Posted with Blogsy