I Don't Want To Go Sleep, I Wanna Stay Up All Night...

Yeah that's right, I just quoted a Ke$ha song.

So I am the worst "live" blogger ever. I stopped blogging from Ragnar Chicago right after I finished my first run around the time my stomach started hardcore hating me and stupid me thought it would be a good idea to try to help settle it by eating chicken and bacon from McDonald's. What an idiot.

Team Hello Jillian/Banditos 2.0/Run to Cure Rabies at the finish

Let's rewind a bit, if you don't know how a Ragnar works, here's a quick lesson. Ragnar is an overnight running relay that makes testing your limits a team sport (I stole that right off their website). Teams of either 6 or 12 make their way from point A to point B, which is usually 200 miles a part, in two vans with each team member running three legs made up of varying distances. This particular Ragnar was from Madison, Wisconsin to Chicago and I was the twelfth leg, so I was the last runner. If anyone ever asks you to be a part of a Ragnar team, DO IT. It will be some of the most fun you'll ever have in your life, especially if you're lucky enough to do it with people you've considered family for almost ten years.

The cool thing about being the last runner is is that you hand off the wristband (essentially the baton in Ragnar) to the first runner in the other van, so when you finish your run, not only is everyone from your van at the exchange cheering you on, everyone from the other van is too, which I thought was pretty awesome.

One not so cool thing about Ragnar is is that everyone runs one of their legs in the middle of the night. Here's the deal. I think I'm a pretty tough girl. I'm not really scared of much, I don't scream like a baby when I see a spider/bee/bug/rat, I am okay at speaking in front of a lot of people and heights don't really get to me, but running by myself in the dark scares the shit out of me. I went to college in Chicago and then lived there for three years after I graduated, so it was constantly pounded into my head to not to walk or run alone at night. To make matters worse, my first leg was 6.75 miles and all on a pitch dark tree-lined trail in the middle of nowhere, so it was really f-ing dark. I had a headlamp, which gave me a massive headache and a blinking LED light on my back, that's it. Holy shit was I scared out of my mind. I am not sure what I was most scared of, a bear jumping out at me (thanks Sarah for putting that thought into my head. I promise I will never ever ever tease you about getting eaten by a shark or an aligator again) or that someone was going to jump out at me, drag me into the woods, have their way with me and I'd never been seen again. There where times when I really wanted to stop and call my teammates in my van to come get me, I was that scared. Besides my anxiety being through the roof, my senses were on overload trying to be completely aware of my surroundings in case I had to be ready to react. By the time I finished, my body was in full on fight or flight mode. My teammates said I looked super freaked out when I came through the exchange and thankfully they all greeted me with a hug helping me to calm down. At that point in the race, I thought if this is what Ragnar is, I f-ing hate it and will never do this shit again!

Van Duces minus Luke (From left to right: Casey, Kristen, me, U-Turn Pat and Heather)

So after attempting to make a meal from McDonald's paleo at midnight and trying to fall asleep in a hallway of a shitty school in suburban Milwaukee (various places along the route open up and let runners use their facilities for sleeping and showering) thankfully things started looking up. Because I was the last runner, my second leg started around 7am when the sun was fully up. I ran 4.7 miles from a park in Racine, WI to the downtown Racine YMCA right on Lake Michigan.

One more thing about Ragnar, there are these things called "kills" where when you pass another Ragnarian you count that as a "kill" so on a lot of the team vans they have a running tally on how many kills the van has gotten. On my first leg, I was too busy trying not to get mauled by a bear or attacked by a creepster to count how many times I got killed. I think it was like 7 or 8 and I sure as hell didn't kill anyone because it seemed like everyone was Usain Bolt's cousin running that leg. So on my second run, I was excited that I got one kill.

After everyone in my van showered, we found this amazing breakfast place a few blocks from the Y called Cliff's Boathouse. We found it via Yelp and when we pulled up to the place, it looked like a dump. Being the Chicago/Evanston/Nashville snobs we are, everyone in the van except Casey and Pat were like, "uh, hell no," but Casey peaked inside and said it looked okay. We were all starving for real food so we got out and ate there. Now I don't know if it was because we were so damn hungry, sleep deprived and delirious that any sort of edible substance would have tasted good at that point or if the food at Cliff's Boathouse was that good, but I'm telling you, the blueberry pancakes and bacon I had for breakfast was the bomb. So if you're ever in beautiful Racine, Wisconsin (they have a 70.3 there), make sure to stop by for their breakfast. It's also dirt cheap.

After stuffing our faces, we got in the van and made our way to the lovely town of North Chicago (you know I'm being sarcastic if you're from Chicago) to start the last leg of our journey. Due to some unforeseen circumstances that were not our team's fault, our runners in van 1 had to all run at the same time to make up lost time, so poor Kristen, runner 7, had to run on a pretty full stomach, but since she's the toughest lady I know, she did just fine and even had some Navy boys from the Great Lakes Naval Station hit on her along the way :)

I just realized it totally looks like I am staring at my lack of boobs in this picture

At this point in the race, I was actually kind of nervous about my last leg which was 8.2 miles. Here's the thing, I haven't been running at all outside of whatever running gets mixed into my WODs. Coupled with a new bitch of a back injury, just feeling like garbage from not getting a lot of sleep and running 11+ miles just a few hours before, I was being a giant baby and thinking I would have to walk a good portion of my last leg. Thankfully, Kristen, Casey and Heather all volunteered to run the leg with me. Kristen ran the entire thing with me, so in total she ran over 27 miles during the race, again she's the toughest lady I know, then Casey and Heather met Kristen and I for the last two miles along the lakefront path in Chicago to bring it on home for the team. I absolutely know if it wasn't for my amazing teammates, I would have probably taken the 151 bus to Montrose and walked the rest of it in, so in case I didn't thank you guys on Saturday, THANK YOU for dragging my ass in and putting up with me!

Ragnar Chicago finishes at Montrose Beach which is somewhere that I spent a lot of time at while living in Chicago training for the Chicago Marathon and I would also take my airedale puppy Chloe to the dog beach there, so besides being super happy to be finishing a 30 hour race, I got a little emotional because Montrose Beach is where I think half of Chloe's soul is resting (the other half is in Farley because I swear he is Chloe reincarnated).

Kristen and I at the finish

A few hundred feet from the finish with everyone from my team watching and a lot of other teams cheering on their last runner, this girl comes up behind Kristen and I to pass us. Kristen says to me, "go get her" and I literally go all H.A.M. and sprint to the finish line almost taking this girl out. I have no idea what overcame me, maybe it was because I got slaughtered on my first leg and killed like 8 times so I wanted some sort of redemption or that the girl looked like she did CrossFit and I wanted to beat her to be like yeah, that's right, CrossFit Cool Springs Girls can bring it, even after running 20+ miles. Whatever it was, apparently it was pretty awesome to watch and that girl was pissed.

Kill or be killed bitches.

That girl in the green thought she'd go in for the kill...not so much my friend