Tahoe Ragnar Trail Relay Series With Clif Bar… The Rest Of The Week

Monday-Wednesday: Not to much going on these past few days. My running consisted of Monday being an easy 12 miles. Amber joined me for my run. Tuesday, I had a speed workout of 400’s. 20 of them. I actually really enjoyed this workout. I don’t know if it’s because the 400’s are so short compared to all the other speed intervals but I do “enjoy” this particular workout. On Wednesday, it was an easy 8. 🙂 I love my easy days!!! Especially the short easy days. For cross country they had there easy 7 miles on Monday…  

 A speed on Tuesday (which consisted of 400’s)…  

 And on Wednesday, we drove up to Sundance for a trail run to Stewart Falls. Everyone walked through the waterfall (except for me… I’m trying to teach these kids not to give into peer pressure) and then we went to sonic to get shakes/slurpee’s… The high school kids love this run! 

 The girls complained about doing chores all week so they never did them and we still took them out for ice cream. Isn’t that how parenting goes? We did meet up with our friends (the Barneys) for ice cream, even though our kids didn’t deserve it. They did play with neighbors throughout the week and so did we. 🙂  

Thursday-Saturday (for the kids): I went out for my long run today because we are doing Ragnar this weekend. So I went out for a 20 miler. I was able to run it in 2:26. It felt good. We packed our stuff, got the girls ready for my sisters and then took off for our Tahoe trail Ragnar trip! The girls had fun with their Aunt, Uncle  & cousins. They went swimming, to the park, did movie night outside, etc. On Saturday night, Amber and her brother Brandon (I coached both of them at the HS and now they have both graduated) picked up my girls. They took them to the Demolition Derby. My girls said they had so much fun!!! I was so grateful for Amber and Brandon because my sister had to work and my other babysitter was at our house all day on Saturday. I had already bought the tickets and didn’t want them to go to waste. Anyway… Those 2 took them and had fun! Corom and I were on our way home from Tahoe at that time.  

Thursday-Saturday (our trip to Tahoe with Ragnar): After we dropped the kids off at my sisters (around 3 p.m.), Corom and I finally headed out for Tahoe. We are running the trail series of Ragnar. We caravaned down with the Bells. Tanner is the co-founder of the Ragnar relay races. We are running on his team but running for Clif Bar. The Clif Barbarians. We stopped in Elko (where Corom and I were arrested together) to fix the tie-rod in our car and to grab something to eat with the Bells. We finally made it into Tahoe and stayed at the condos that the rest of the team stayed at (thanks to the Clif Bar representatives).  

 We got in around midnight but had a good night sleep… Come the next day, our adventure began. We set up camp and the introductions began. We shared the VIP campsites with the CEO’s and financial guys of Ragnar (they put a team together)… So we had the hookup with all the Clif products that we wanted and a few other luxerys. Nancy was our camera person (from Clif Bar), so I will be posting more pictures later… Right now you will be getting my cheesy pictures (except for the 1st and 3rd pic…These are from Nancy):  

 The trail Ragnar is nice because you have a base camp with 8 people on your team (in order: Tara-Clif rep, Corom-my husband & original nevernude, Kristen Bell-cofounder’s wife, Kelly Southwell-original nevernude- watch my video on this blog site for the nevernudes Las Vegas Ragnar to see what I’m talking about, Ryan Southwell-original nevernude, Me-an original nevernude, Karrie-Clif rep, & Tanner Bell- cofounder of Ragnar)… Anyway, it’s a base camp and one runner goes at a time. Once runner 1 is done with the green loop (easiest out of the 3, 3.2 miles), that person hands off to runner 2 who runs the yellow loop (medium, 5.6 miles). Runner 2 hands off to runner 3, who runs the Red loop (extremely hard 7.3 miles). Runner 3 hands off to 4 who then runs the green loop.  

You cycle through all 3 loops running non-stop as a team… I ran the 1st one (which was the red loop) around 6 p.m. (Our group started at 1… The earliest groups started at 10 a.m. and the last groups started at 4 p.m. It all depends on your times.) It was amazing. Very Hard with a hard climb up to the top of Soda Springs Resort (or something). The trails (on all 3 loops) were amazing! It was 7.3 and I ran it in 59:57. I handed off to Karrie… I went back to our camp and rested, hung out, ate, etc. The weird thing around my legs were a compression thing that helped your legs not to ache for your next run. Chris (one of the CEO’s) brought it. And as you can see, Corom was as entertaining as ever. Everyone loved him there!!! 

  Kristen and Tanner had there baby there… She was the team’s baby! The cutest thing and she was so good! We all received a free dinner with our entry (so I guess not so free but it was good). 

 I ran my 2nd leg around 2 a.m. It was the yellow loop (5.6) and I ran it in 47:07. This loop was amazing in the dark. Had 2 major hills but there is something about running hills in the dark… You just can’t tell how bad they really are. I was able to get some sleep for a few hours before and when I finished that run, I used the leg machine, ate beef stroganoff with Ryan, then went back to bed around 3:30. Corom’s legs were so tired that he was dreading the red loop (7.3), while I had the easier green (3.2) loop next. So I traded him. Where he was runner 2, I only got another hour and a half sleep. I ran the red loop again but I ran it during the sunrise. I was so mad at myself for not bringing my camera!  

It was absolutely amazing!!! My legs were tired but not as tired as I thought they would be. I was able to run a 1:01.42. I ran to the exchange and my teammate was not there yet. So I began the green loop (it passes by our tents)… We handed off there. 🙂 I ended up running the green loop with Kristen just to get a few more miles in. I was happy to be done once that was over.  

 In between our downtime, we would go from team to team and pass out Cliff Bar products in our Barbarian outfits. It really was a blast!! Corom was grateful to have traded. He ran the 3.2 for his 1st and last run with the 5.6 mile yellow one at night. Our team finished a little before one. We packed up our stuff and sadly said our goodbyes to everyone. It was a great trip and I am so grateful for everyone who helped with my girls (Missy & Mike, Janey, Amber & Brandon and Megan & Travis)! We made it home in pretty good timing. The one bad thing about our trip was the air conditioner wasn’t working in our car. oh my gosh… I never sweated so much! On the way home Corom did make a mini swamp cooler, with a towel, water and ice…

We finally made it home by 11:15 (Travis was there watching over the girls for that last stretch of time) and eventually went to bed a little after 12:30 a.m. We were beat!!! 

Sunday: Corom had an early morning meeting, and I met up with him for another meeting (all for church). Church was good… The girls were a little restless and tired, but they had a long weekend, too. My 7 year old (2nd child) saw a picture of a stork carrying a baby (during sacrament meeting). She asked me if that’s how babies were brought into mom’s tummies. I told her no thinking that that was it. She then whispers, “well, how does a baby get in your tummy?” I did tell her I will explain that later when we can sit down and talk… Thank goodness we both forgot about it. She is also the one that asked me if the “F” word was a bad word. She said the word when she asked. (This was a couple of months ago as we were all eating breakfast). Corom and I held a straight face and I said, “Even the people that do say bad words, try not to say this word because it’s that bad.”  She heard it from someone in her class… This kid did tell her it was a bad word so I guess that was good, right? 🙂 We visited a couple of families after church and then We had dinner with the Fullmers. We were able to put our kids to bed at 7 p.m. And they eventually fell asleep by 7:45. They were tired and we are tired. It was a beautiful sunset tonight (thanks Amber) to finish off our day.