Because I can...: Beginning stages of Ragnar

Thursday, day before Ragnar starts- super excited that its finally arrived!! Despite getting out of work early, once I went and picked up the mini van from the rental and got all the last minute supplies for decorating the van it was already time to pick up Scottie from the airport by 7:30pm. Had a few hours to kill before the rest of van 2 crew came in so we had Qdoba for dinner (never do mexican before running) and got all of our grocery shopping taken care of for the weekend. Back to airport at 11:00pm to pick up 3 of the other teammates, all of Scottie's good friends from college. Once we get back to my place its time to put together our decorations to 'wal*mart' ourselves- aka make vests w/ flair, headgear, and the 2 hour long process it took for some of the guys to make stencils from scratch to match the Walmart logo... guess thats what happens when you pair arts / graphic design background w/ a teacher. Bed by 4am, its not like we need to be up early or anything- so begins the sleep deprivation.

I'm a stickler for being on time- we had planned that we needed to be on the road the same time our fellow teammates, van 1 began the race. Chattanooga, where the race started, is in est time zone, Nashville is central time zone,so therefore needed to be on the road by 8am- didn't happen. Was supposed to wake up at 7am so we could be on the road and meet up with our 6th teammate Kristy by 8am. Woke up late, rushed to pack the van, make breakfast, and double check we have everything. 15 minutes late in meeting up with Kristy at Target. Once there, we needed last minute supplies and 30 min later finally on the road. So unfortunately I'm driving, have a lead foot, and we're an hour behind- bad combination. Lets just say the cops were involved and put us well past 1.5 hours behind our schedule- awesome. Make it to the highway, something happened along the way with our GPS and we bypassed our exit and ended up in Georgia- not Jasper, TN where our exchange was.
Thankfully we found the place and after our quick safety training we still had plenty of time to spare to begin the decorating of our vehicle!

Stenciling on 'Walmart' to the side of the van

Sloan adding duct tape to the lights we'll be adding to the van- love the hair

Front of Van

Once we were done decorating it was time to wait till we got the call from van 1 that the last runner had left and we should begin to prepare for out first runner. With nothing to do it was extremely apparent how cold it was, mid 30s at best, frustrating since it was 60s 2 days prior.

Van 2- Me, Kristy, Sara, Sloan, Scott, Craig

Lucky for me my dad was in Atlanta on business this week so he drove up and met us at our exchange point to follow us around and of course cheer on his daughter!

Dad and me

Scottie and me!

Finally get the call from van 1 that our first runner should start getting ready and at that moment it starts pouring! .... just like that all our window paint washes off

So our first leg, leg 7, is Scottie, and it is by far probably one of the hardest legs of the entire race. He has to run 5.3 miles up this mountain. Each leg is classified as easy, moderate, hard, very hard dependent on mileage and elevation- this was 'very hard' due to an increase of 1100 elevation change.

The mountain Scott will be running up, and eventually, myself running down.

Each leg is also classified as 'support' or 'non support' meaning whether or not you can get out of your van and supply your runner with water, gu, or whatever else they need. If your leg is a non support leg they at least supply you water stations along the way so you can get in some hydration. Majority of first legs were non support being as we were on a mountain and the roads were extremely narrow. Still pulled over if there a spot to do so and screamed, cowbelled, and air horned. Unfortunately for Scottie, not only did he have to put up with some major hills, but it managed to pour, then sleet, then slightly snow all during his 5 mile run- impressive enough his wig managed to stay on the whole time!