Little Miss Runshine

Last year I ran with team Jumbo Love in the Ragnar Relay.  It was such an awesome experience that five of my running friends and I just signed up for Ragnar New England 2011, a 200 mile Relay from Yale to Harvard May 20 and 21. The race is split up into 36 legs and the team members alternate running nonstop until they finish.

The normal teams are 12 members but we decided we wanted to “go the distance” and try the ultra version where there are only 6 team members.

You may be asking why we would ever want to do this. And sometimes we may ask ourselves the same question. But it is an amazing experience knowing you worked together with your friends to run 200 miles is priceless. The lack of sleep and bonding while being stuck in a van. The cheering in the wee hours of the night. The fun costumes to build team spirit. Doing what most people wouldn’t want to do. It’s a rush!

A couple of us have run this type of relay before, but never with an average of 33 miles per person. We all just finished our marathon and half marathon training together and are getting pumped for this new challenge and making some great memories.

Keep your eye out for our team-The Red Rockettes!

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I tend to be known for being clumsy. I am pretty sure when I walk I swing my arms more than a normal person because I often end up hitting the sides of the table or walls or people when I walk by them. Or I will turn a corner too sharp and wipe out in slippery weather. Or I may get distracted in a conversation and not realize that the wall juts out a few inches and side check the wall.

But those don’t compare to the next incident… I went running one night in the dark. I took all safety precautions-wore my reflective vest, a headlamp, and I ran on the grass on the side of a narrow road to avoid fast approaching cars. But when a car came with some bright lights I felt blinded and went to create some sort of visor with my hands. In doing so, I forgot to keep an eye out for where I was actually going.

This is when I ran into a pole. It was a street sign to be exact. My whole left side hit the pole and I bounced off. I was just glad I didn’t deflect into the road and get hit by a car. But I did feel something fly off of me. Was it my head lamp? No-I can see the light. I looked at my wrist and the impact when my watch hit the pole-combined with it being so brittle from the cold air-resulted in the molded plastic wristband breaking from the watch face.

This normally might not seem like a bad thing. But this was my Garmin Forerunner 405 that stuck with me for three marathons and I have become very attached to it. It appeared that half of the wristband was lost, so I proceeded to search around on the side of the road for three minutes or so to he missing half. Feeling hopeless, I ran home. My face was so frozen I couldn’t speak clearly. So if you can imagine, when I told my family that I had ran into a pole, I had to repeat myself a few times. At this point I realized that the other half of my wristbands was still attached to the side of the wristband still on the watch face! Hopefully Garmin can fix my watch for not too large of a fee!

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