Balabanova All Over

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[San Juan Islands, WA, Sat, Jul 14, 2018] Getting up at 1 am after barely getting any sleep was not fun at all. Luckily, reuniting with van 1 for a short while helped boost our energy. The next 30+ miles were ours, and we were going to be running into the daylight hours on Saturday morning. This portion of the course took us over to the San Juan islands, where we were… Read More

[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… Read More

[Bellingham, WA, Thu, July 12, 2018] Those of you who’ve been with me for a while may remember our previous Ragnar adventure in Hawaii. That was back in 2016. Our crew likes to get together for a running trip once a year for either a national park half marathon or a ragnar, and this year’s honors fell to Ragnar Northwest Passage. The course for this race runs from Blaine, WA, near the… Read More

[Kona, HI, Oct 15, 2016] And here we are, day 2 of this adventure! We spent the night in our van in the parking lot of major exchange #2. Van #2 has been running their 6 legs since midnight or so last night, so we were expecting Creighton to be coming in fairly early this morning. Yes, we slept in the van! And this is not a big 12- or 15-passenger van…. Read More

[Hilo, HI, Oct 14, 2016] Yep, that 3:30 wake up call was not fun. Our van was loaded from the night before, so we just had to add the coolers with the perishables. Mike, Laura, May, Camilla, myself and Lena jumped in, all of us jealous that the six peeps in van #2 got to sleep in. The two-hour drive to Hilo was uneventful. We crossed the Big Island in the middle,… Read More