Existential Tread

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WE’RE PUTTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER

AND TAKING IT TO CALIFORNIA

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Anyone live in the greater Boston area who drives a Honda CR-V? Totally saw your car with the Ragnar bumper sticker!!

Nope! We are based in Chicago(ish), Las Vegas, Grand Rapids, and New York. John’s in Boston a lot, but he’s not putting stickers on every car he rents, as fun as that might be.

Hopefully, whoever you saw has one of our magnets in their possession.

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Those smiles say: we’re done running, and soon we’ll be in a warm hotel bar drinking whiskey.

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1/3 done

About 40 minutes ahead of our projected pace. Everyone healthy, spirits high. Van 1 back on the road, van 2 getting dinner and then some rest.

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Quick update

The starting area was just beautiful, right on the lake. It was pitch black when we got there at 7:15...living on the far western edge of a time zone has to be rough. But the sun was peeking out when Kelsey started at 8:00. Such great energy at the gate! This is gonna be amazing.

Currently, runner four (Chris) is on the course for the Ragnar leg. It’s the longest, over 9 miles. The first three runners combined to be 15 minutes ahead of pace, so overall, a great start.

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Pre-game meal. Ready to do this thing.

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The spreadsheet is all tuned up, with some improvements based on what we learned last year. I wish there was some kind of way for people outside the race to track our progress, but Ragnar doesn’t offer that. Partly, it’s because they’re a pretty low-tech operation. Last year we saw officials writing our exchange times on paper with pens and clipboards, like cavemen. But maybe more importantly, being able to locate where people are running alone in the middle of the night has obvious downsides. Maybe this year we’ll be better about posting status during the race.

[aforeverchangingpath]

So what are you doing October 11th?  I know what I’m doing!!

[stitches-running]

Oh, most definitely! Yes!

[hopefulmisanthrope]

For my Ragnar ladies.

@existentialtread

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Here’s an excellent thing we can all support.

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You know it’s getting close to Ragnar (five weeks from today!) when the logo art is ready. Behold how insanely talented @casaofjules2 is, and how freaking lucky we are that she’s willing to donate her time and skill to our logo creation. She also did another amazing piece which we’ll use for the magnets.

Planning is moving along. We’ve assigned everyone their legs, and we are working out some of the travel logistics for the day before the race, when 10/12 of the team will converge somewhere in/around Chicago, pick up the vans, and head toward Muskegon. We’ll pick up the other 2/12 along the way in Michigan.

Based on our estimated individual paces, I’m anticipating they’ll assign us a really early start time, probably 5:30am or so. We’ll find out for sure next week, and then we can really dig into the race logistics. One of the big mistakes we made last year was failing to plan the downtime well for the van that’s not on the course. We ended up wasting a lot of time that would have been better spent eating or sleeping. This year we’ll know where we’re eating, buying supplies (if necessary), and resting before we hit the road.

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The text is small, but that’s us in 13th place (of 53) in the Open/Mixed division, with a total time of 30:23:11. If you’d told me before the race we’d come in anywhere in the top half, I’d have told you you were daft. The principal goal here was to finish without someone being badly injured. We weren’t here to actually race and had no competitive aspirations at all, but, not gonna lie: it felt really good to learn we’d done this well. Lots of credit for that high finish has to go to the Cali girls, all of whom were fast. They helped improve our standing quite a bit. 

[results]

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Magnets!

A Ragnar tradition is to “tag” the other vans with business card-sized magnets with your logo on them. Fortunately, @inmi heard about this on a podcast a while ago, so she had a box of them made using our second logo (seen in large format just below the license plate) by the amazing @casaofjules2. We were tagged by all the ones you see here, along with some other “graffiti” done in washable markers. It really adds to the sense of community you feel with the other teams out there.

It’s a super fun custom and I’m glad we were prepared. Next time we’ll have the markers, too.

[schmidlap]

At the finish line yesterday with the full team, which includes the other six-pack we were paired with. Their group was named “Last Minute Losers” but that’s about the difficult circumstances of their formation, not about their drive or ability. California girls can really run.

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We put some lights up in the van, but we have some work to do to keep up next time.

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Home.

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I posted this earlier but tumblr ate it. What new.

Anyway, this is the first part of the first leg, near the starting area in Wickenburg. Christa will kick this thing off with some dusty trail running before she turns south along Vulture Mine Road.

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Pretty good pace for this leg, even with a stumble at the start.

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