[Bellingham, WA – Burlington, WA, Friday, July 13, 2018]

And just like that, it was race day! Half of our team departed early in the morning in van 1 to get to Blaine, WA, where they got started at 7 am. They had just over 30 miles to cover, so we were expecting them to turn over to us around 1 pm. This meant we had the entire morning to relax in our hotel.  It was a very nice change from our previous Ragnar in Hawaii, where I was in van 1 and had to drive two hours across the big island to start the race at 6 am. This time, we had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and finished decorating our van.

At the exchange, we got our first glimpses of all the other vans, team names and crazy decorations! This is also where we got to hang out with van 1 and hear how their morning went. They almost crossed into Canada trying to find the starting line!

So now it was our turn to run. We also had 30+ miles to cover, so our legs took us from Belingham, WA to Burlington, WA, where would turn back over to Van 1. Time flew by following our active runner and stopping along the course to support him or her. At one of the exchanges, we encountered a poop-themed team that even had an inflatable poop emoji. It made for fun photos.

My leg was uneventful. The distance, 5.4 miles, was not challenging, but it got hot by the time I was running. Here’s a video of me coming in to hand off to Lena. I am to the right of the video in a blue shirt. I go off camera for a little while because I didn’t realize where the chute was. My teammates had to redirect me at the last minute to where Lena was waiting for me.

We reached our van turnover exchange in Burlington around 8 pm. One of the highlights at this exchange was a canine Ragnar supporter called Murphy.

Photo by Lena. She took some great photos with her big camera!

After turning over to van 1, our team went ahead to the exchange where van 1 would turn it back over to us. It was about 8 pm at this point, and we knew we’d have to grab a quick dinner and try to get some sleep. A lot of people had brought sleeping bags and such to sleep outside, but most of us tried our best to get comfy in our 15-passenger van, with little success. On top of it, it was only 9 pm and it was hard for us to get any sleep that early in the evening. The 1 am alarm was pretty brutal!

This is around the time when someone inevitably asks, why do we do this again? Answer in next post. 🙂