{"id":2823,"date":"2011-08-26T09:06:38","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T14:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/?p=2823"},"modified":"2011-08-25T10:49:10","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T15:49:10","slug":"2011-great-river-ragnar-relay-leg-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2011\/2011-great-river-ragnar-relay-leg-29\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 Great River Ragnar Relay Leg 29"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is always a relief to start the last leg of Ragnar. \u00a0You are almost done with a great challenge and by this point everyone is starting to get excited. \u00a0You are exhausted – but the hope of a few more road kills and the knowledge that you are back in Minnesota and will soon be finishing make you excited.<\/p>\n

Everyone in my van was pretty excited about the shortness of their legs. \u00a0Most were under 4 miles. \u00a0Mine was 7. \u00a0With a lot of hills. \u00a0Remember the overnight where I fought it out on an uphill? Yup, I felt it. \u00a0The excitement and anticipation grew as my time to run slowly came. \u00a0The leg right before mine had some rough hills on some narrow roads in Afton along the St. Croix River (beautiful views). \u00a0I took over on top of a hill,\u00a0immediately\u00a0descended – crossed a road and went right back up! \u00a0Total elevation gain was over 800 feet with a net elevation loss over the 7 mile course (not that I felt that part!).<\/p>\n

A stretch of this run was also on gravel roads. \u00a0Interestingly there were no water stops on this leg despite its length. \u00a0I got passed fairly early on but didn’t attempt to go with him. \u00a0I wanted to finish and wasn’t super interested in another gut busting run. \u00a0I could see a couple of runners ahead of me as we rose and fell over the miles. \u00a0 I was slowly reeling in a runner ahead of me and passed her on a downhill.<\/p>\n

This was a fairly boring stretch with some shade along the way. \u00a0We turned on to a busier road and eventually had to cross the street and ended up on a bike path that surrounded\/went through several subdivisions and finished the leg on this trail. \u00a0I caught another road kill on this stretch. \u00a0As we ran through the subdivisiony area some people had come out to spectate including a kid on his bike with his grandma. Grandma was trying to get him to cheer us on, but he wasn’t into that idea!<\/p>\n

The trail wound back and forth and I picked off a few more runners as we neared the finish area. \u00a0I didn’t know if I’d get the last few or not before the exchange but it was far enough away that I was able to get a few more – totaling 5 for this leg!<\/p>\n

Boy was I glad to be done. \u00a0I didn’t feel like I pushed super hard on this leg, but the cumulative effects of the 3 legs made me pretty tired. \u00a0I had averaged 8:20 pace which with the hills I felt really good about. \u00a0This also meant that I had averaged about an 8:30 pace for the duration of my 3 legs which is what I said when I registered!<\/p>\n

We didn’t have a lot of time to waste because Aaron had a pretty short leg so we hopped into the van and made it to the last major exchange!!<\/p>\n

After passing off the reigns to Van 2 we were officially done!! We got some super cold showers and stopped at Burger King for lunch before heading to the finish line. \u00a0We got massages and relaxed by the river while we waited for the updates to come in via the app and text. \u00a0We finally got word the last runner was out and Van 2 was on their way.<\/p>\n

Per relay race tradition you meet your final runner about 100 yards out and you all run in together!!<\/p>\n

Team MN Rocks finished the 2011 Ragnar Relay in 31:11:23 for an average of 9:36 per mile (Ragnar estimated us at 9:40). We placed 219\/250.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the team for a great Ragnar!!<\/p>\n

The view from my last exchange:<\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/a><\/p>\n

Aaron marking off his last leg:<\/p>\n

\"Last<\/a><\/p>\n

Our van with all of the legs marked off:
\n\"Finished!\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our final Road Kill tally – 41:
\n\"Total<\/a><\/p>\n

Finish Line:
\n\"Finish<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a video of Ricky’s Dirty Dozen finishing:
\n<\/object><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is always a relief to start the last leg of Ragnar. \u00a0You are almost done with a great challenge and by this point everyone is starting to get excited. \u00a0You are exhausted – but the hope of a few more road kills and the knowledge that you are back in Minnesota and will soon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,37,544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-running","category-race-review","category-ragnar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4iaAv-Jx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2813,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2011\/2011-ragnar-great-river-leg-5-recap\/","url_meta":{"origin":2823,"position":0},"title":"2011 Ragnar Great River Leg 5 Recap","author":"crossn81","date":"August 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"For the 2011 Ragnar Relay - Great River edition I was the number 5 runner. \u00a0This is a different leg than I had last year and was the longest overall distance for the team. \u00a0An 8 mile, 6 mile, and 7 mile run sounded pretty intimidating and my first run\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Running"","block_context":{"text":"My Running","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/my-running\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/leg5mapelevation-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2301,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2010\/ragnar-great-river-my-running-legs\/","url_meta":{"origin":2823,"position":1},"title":"Ragnar Great River – My Running Legs","author":"crossn81","date":"August 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This will be the first in at least two posts about Ragnar. The basics of a relay race is that you split up the 193 mile race into more doable segments. \u00a0Ragnar's Great River Relay is broken into 36 legs which get split up between 12 runners (or 6 in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Running"","block_context":{"text":"My Running","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/my-running\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Inflated Logo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4115\/4926589992_8cfb8b7887_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2819,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2011\/2011-ragnar-great-river-leg-17\/","url_meta":{"origin":2823,"position":2},"title":"2011 Ragnar – Great River Leg 17","author":"crossn81","date":"August 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Running a 10k at night, on a gravel road, in the middle of no where sounds pretty boring, lonely, and a little scary. If you do it alone. \u00a0Fortunately, for me I only had to run the first 1.5 miles alone. \u00a0That was a very lonely stretch. \u00a0There were no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "10K"","block_context":{"text":"10K","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/10k\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/leg17mapelevation-300x297.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1909,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2010\/ragnarworldvision\/","url_meta":{"origin":2823,"position":3},"title":"Very Crazy Idea – I need YOUR Help","author":"crossn81","date":"March 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear friend who may or may not occasionally run, I decided to do something a little crazy, especially since I've been suffering from Plantar Fasciitis and my knee randomly swelled up on me recently. I signed up a team for the Ragnar Relay - Great River edition. On August 20\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Charity"","block_context":{"text":"Charity","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/charity\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ragnarrelay.com\/i\/races\/river\/title.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2292,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2010\/ragnar-done\/","url_meta":{"origin":2823,"position":4},"title":"Ragnar Done!!","author":"crossn81","date":"August 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"What a fun experience!! I'm going to be posting more about Ragnar as time permits, but it was an experience of a lifetime! I'm\u00a0definitely\u00a0sore and tired but it was a great adventure. \u00a0 We finished in just under 30 hours for the 193 mile journey! I ran 3 legs. \u00a0At\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Running"","block_context":{"text":"My Running","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/my-running\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Stillwater Lift Bridge at Dawn #ragnar - Saturday","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4141\/4917938767_42b19b7566_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2806,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2011\/weekly-report-26\/","url_meta":{"origin":2823,"position":5},"title":"Weekly Report","author":"crossn81","date":"August 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"With the Ragnar Relay looming at the end of the week I didn't want to expend too much energy training - specifically running. \u00a0I ended up with a lot lower all around mileage than expected though. \u00a0I did a fair amount of riding around town doing errands with Nadia attached\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Running"","block_context":{"text":"My Running","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/my-running\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2823"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2826,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions\/2826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}