LongRunner sent this out to out team this evening - a response from the Ragnar officials:
From: Janessa Black <janessa@ragnarrelay.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:31:21 -0600
Subject: Ragnar Events Texas Relay
To: grunning@gmail.com
Richard
With only having 4 runners you will treat the other 2 runners as injured
runners. You can split the 2 runners legs among the 4 runners but you can’t
switch runners in the middle of a leg.
If you have any question please let me know.
Thanks
Janessa Black
Ragnar Events, LLC
janessa@ragnarrelay.com
T: 801-295-5536
F: (801) 296-0236
Heck yes, I have questions, such as what does this mean, and what does it mean if we are disqualified? Do they shoot us like wild dogs in the middle of Texas hill country? Will they not provide us with any support - what support are they providing to us anyway, will they not let us cross a finish line? Janessa, with all due respect, please let us better understand the actual “Why” behind your rules. All you have done is restate what we already knew which was posted in the guide rules LONG AFTER we already had received acknowledgement of our plan to switch off runners every hour from your officials.
I’m sure you have a really terrific reason why you have additional rules aside from some basic ones such as here is the route, here is the team, run, stay on the path, don’t die and we’ll see you at the finish.
Hey just in case you are wondering, this is supposed to be fun. We’re not getting paid for this, in fact, we’re paying you, so unless I’m mistaken, we’re the customers here and it would be really terrific if you could remember that as you are parroting the same information over and over.
With kind regards,
-Coach Adam
I thought I would post this picture taken within our secret lab a few days ago. Notice the high-dollar training equipment. Being techno-geeks, we splurge on monitors, but everything else is procured from Goodwill stores.
You may be asking “Why do you run with swords?” To that, I ask you “Why DON’T you run with swords?” Swords solve so many problems:
- Dogs.
- Bullies.
- Course Judges.
- Opening food containers.
- Impressing people that might be friends with other people that might be friends with other people that might know some chicks. Seriously, why is this lab such a meat market?
I fired up a Google Docs spreadsheet where we can jointly put together checklists and make sure we don’t forget anything. For fun, it’s publicly viewable at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pM9ijV7-P8qAS3b9hF3A-QQ
All team members the ability to edit it all they want. I just threw up some info to get us started. The second tab is our list for first aid gear. We should probably add tabs for arrival dates/times, a reference for guesstimated paces (for later embarrassment), running schedules, and who’s in which van.
<soapbox>
I also have learned something from running my own mini-ragnar. There is absolutely no time for people to be looking for food between their running sections. If you want to not bonk, you need to eat and sleep as much as possible between every leg. If it’s 3 AM and somebody gets in the van and requests the van to go careening all over Hill Country looking for a burger, I’m gonna murder somebody in the face. Twice. PLEASE plan on each person having their own “big-ass-cooler” stuffed with all their food and drugz for the entire event. I’m going to have mine stuffed with PB&J sandwiches and ass tons of pre-cooked pasta.
You have to eat constantly to consume the calories needed for this thing. And sleep. I’m not too good at sleeping and eating at the same time.
When you have only three hours between stopping and starting, it goes something like this -
- Collapsing on pavement. 5 minutes.
- Getting in van, getting rolling again. 5 minutes.
- Talking, cooling down. 15 minutes.
- Eat. 30 minutes.
- Change out of clothes into something more comfortable. 10 minutes
- Try to fall asleep. 30 minutes.
- Get ready to start running again. 45 minutes.
Seriously, that’s an honest assessment of what times it takes to do this. That leaves you only 40 minutes to sleep, and that sleep will probably suck if you get any at all. It’s sleep deprivation that is going to get you in the end. And without sleep, you make bad judgment calls, like not eating enough.
My plan is to get off the road and immediately eat and then try to sleep, starting right after the very first run. Every bit will help starting about 10 hours into this som-beetch. With only four people running, we can’t afford to not be organized and lose sleep and calories by hunting for food in a part of Texas that is sparsely populated at best.
We each need to be prepared, supplied to take care of ourselves at the least, and with some extra for others just in case.
We need to really think through the food, driving, sleeping situation for such an epic race. Average 70 calories per mile = 360 calories every 6 miles = 3000 calories on top of your regular intake. That needs to be available for you, in a format you can consume, right when you can eat it.
If you don’t have it available right after you finish running, you will be eating it too close to your next running leg and risk barfing it all back up on the course. Looks awesome, feels not so much.
</soapbox>
Well, as you have read in our previous post, we’ve uncounted a small obstacle in our approach to competing in the Ragnar. I quickly put together a request to the race officials and hopefully they will agree that its appropriate to allow us to run as we had originally intended. I’ll keep you posted.
SENT TO RAGNAR:
I have a question/request about managing the ultra division relay portions. Early on we landed on putting together a team of 4 to complete within the Ultra division with the understanding that we would split up the distances equally. This decision was based on an email from a Ragnar official that supported this concept (I should also not that this was long before the race bible was released). As you are well aware, the race bible has been officially released and after reviewing it I know I understand that because my team does not match the typical ultra team (4 members instead of 6) then we must treat the remaining 2 slots the same as if we had injured runners. My concerns are this: by following this method our team is unfairly penalized because two of our runners will be responsible for a much larger workload than the remainder of the team. I request that team White Line Fever be allowed to run as we initially intended and the way that we were initially instructed to run: Runner 1, then 2, 3, 4 and repeat. This will not give us any unfair advantage over any team. In fact, it allows the playing field to be leveled and further allows me to split the workload evenly among our team members. I look forward to your reply and the support for our team.
Thank you,
Richard
Uh, had a down couple of weeks there. Felt really tired and stressed. I’ve learned to just roll with it and lay off the exercise until I feel better. Felt recharged by earlier this week and started cranking out some mileage again.
Also got motivated for some cycling because I finally got my new bike setup with the Suunto Bike Pod. It’s a wireless front wheel transmitter that talks to my watch. I just strap my watch to the handlebars and then I have distance, speed, HR, all that jazz.
On top of that, the little kid down the street is back from a long trip and Kai now has somebody else to play with, which gives me a little more time to get workouts done. Gotta love the neighborhood kids!
Wednesday - 6 mile run at a 10:08 pace.
Thursday - Whipped out the bike for a short night ride in huge gears up and down hills. Was lots of fun.
Saturday - Went for a nice bike ride and bonked after trying to keep up with a couple of badasses. Stats - Duration: 02:16:52
Distance: 39.2 mi
Pace: 17.2 mph
Sunday - My greyhound has decided to annoy the sh!t out of me if I don’t take her running, so now I take her for half an hour and then go out again at a faster pace. I use the time running with her as a warm up and then turn around and stamp out miles as fast as I can. It works out really well for both of us. Stats -
Run 1 - Duration: 01:30:05
Distance: 9.4 mi
Pace: 09:35/mi
Run 2 - Duration: 01:00:00
Distance: 6.1 mi
Pace: 09:50/mi
And that’s about it. My shoes have about 250 miles on them in two months, so I need to replace them soon.
Adding the team sherpas to this email string and taking this conversation to the blog.
Don’t forget that I need everyone’s pace time. Let’s plan to have this information to me by Wednesday of next week, or earlier.
I’m planning to do a mini Ragnar today to gain some insight into what I may experience during this race. I just completed my first 10 mile run and will head back out for another in a few hours. We’ll see how many of these I can knock out.
Have a great weekend,
Rich
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Brett wrote:
Ok let’s definitely include jetpack and triboomer
And the other volunteer in this conversation
So they can offer to run for us if some of us
Get hurt or quit.
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 14, 2008, at 8:28 PM, Coach Adam wrote:
why do we freak’n care what order they tell us to run this in? Are we doing this for some external accolade or to spend two days together as friends running from San Antonio to Austin. I could care less what constraints these people put on us as long as they provide us with whatever support to which we are entitled along the way.
I also think we should take this conversation to the blog, since that was the place to have an open dialogue. People should have the ability to see what we are challenged with to run this race.
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:02:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Start Time Requests & Team Paces Due
I guess contact them again and ’splain what they told us. Tell them we wanted to run an hour each and see what they say.
If we do it their way, that’s an average 11 to 12 miles per person 3 times each and then we’re left with each of us running 6 miles again 2 times each. I suppose I could run an average of 10 minute mile on that… Cracked up on HJ and caffeine.
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 8:32 PM, Richard wrote:
Hey guys, looks like I’ll need each of you to run a half marathon on Saturday. Or you can forward me your projected pace for the Ragnar. What start time do we want to request? I’m a morning guy so I’d like to start early but that would put a good part of our run during the high heat of the day but on that thought, we can’t escape the heat on this race. At a 10 minute average pace, we are looking at 33 hours.
Here is a line from the race bible: NOTE: If your average team pace is slower than 11 minutes per mile, please contact us. Do we suspect that we will run less than an 11 minute mile on average?
Also, I may have found a problem for us in the rule book. We have two options here:
1. We can fight this because I was told that we could have a team of 4
2. Just suck it up and add new members.
Here are the rules that may give us problems.
Six runners
Ultra teams are made up of six runners. Each member of the team will complete six legs of the Great River Relay,
that is, two legs back to back three times (e.g., the first runner completes legs 1, 2, 13, 14, 25 and 26). Any other
method of breaking up the course will result in immediate disqualification.
I asked the race organizers about this when we have a team of 4 and this is what I received:
An ultra team with four runners basically works like a 6-person team with two injured runners. After you cycle through all four runners (with each runner completing two consecutive legs), anyone can pick up the injured runners’ legs–one or two at a time. Because of the way the exchange points are set up, the distance of each segment will vary. Runners must hand off at exchange points.
To divide the course up evenly, you might consider runners 1 and 2 picking up the first legs of runners 5 and 6, with runners 3 and 4 picking up the second legs of runners 5 and 6. The last four legs may be divided evenly between your four runners. That’s just one option; you’re free to divvy up the injured runners’ legs however you wish.
Other team sizes
We do not permit teams to run with any number of runners from 4 to 12 runners. If you wish to run with a number
of runners other than 6 or 12, please contact us so we can explain the procedures to you.
Let me know your thoughts here,
Rich
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: MyoMed Ragnar Relay <info@ragnarrelay.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 12:27 PM
Subject: Start Time Requests & Team Paces Due
Texas Teams:
It is time to request your team’s starting time! Each team should submit their official team pace and top three preferred starting times by Friday, August 22, 2008. To request a starting time please go through the website at www.ragnarrelay.com/austin/requeststart.html
Teams can request three starting times which are every hour on the hour from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. We take each team’s top three preferred starting times and the pace submitted to assign times. We try to put teams in one of their preferred time slots, but we are not always able to fulfill these requests. Keep in mind that it is extremely important that the pace you submit for your team is accurate. We are implementing new starting time request rules this year. Please note the following:
* Each team must submit their team’s overall pace, if you do not submit a pace, you will not be assigned a starting time.
* Once starting times are assigned, you will have one week from the date starting times are posted to make a change. If you need to change your starting time after this, you will be charged a $50 fee for each change you make.
* Penalties will be strictly enforced for getting ahead of your projected pace, so please do not “sandbag” your team’s pace. For information on penalties please refer to the Northwest Passage Race Bible.
To accurately project your team’s pace, use each individual runner’s 10k race pace for regular teams and each individual runner’s half marathon pace for ultra teams. If individuals have not participated in a competitive 10k/half marathon recently, we strongly encourage you to run one before submitting your team’s pace. If you are not able to participate in a 10k/half marathon, get your team together for a training run and run a 10k/half marathon at a competitive pace.
Accurate pace predictions are critical to a successful event and will allow us to place teams in starting slots which will produce the least amount of congestion on the course.
If you have any questions on this, please contact us at (877)83-RELAY.
Thanks!
Ragnar Staff
Emily recorded a great audio update to our training progress. We called it RAGNAR RADAR and there should be more coming on a regular basis!
Check it out here - http://tinyurl.com/5a3wtb
Uh, I bummed around a lot and tried to catch up on some sleep. Then I went surfing on Saturday and scored some great leftover waves from Hurricane Dolly. Then I ran 4+ miles on Sunday. That’s about it. I love being a lazy-ass runner instead of a hard core triathlete.
I broke 50 miles for the week! The real story is the final run on Sunday. After already running 34 miles by Saturday, I cranked out another 17 miles at an astonishing (for me) 8:56 pace. I did the Galloway run-walk method, running 9 minutes and then walking 1 the whole way. I also was drinking a serving of Hornet Juice every hour, making me feel like I was simply flying along. It was crazy!
I also started doing some regular yoga sessions. There’s a yoga video podcast from www.yogamazing.com that is very cool. I just set up the laptop on the coffee table and go at it.
Along with the HJ, it seems like getting some more sleep was critical to bigger mileage. If I get a lot of sleep, I’m not as sore, and I have more energy during next day’s run.
Tha Log -
MONDAY Jul. 14, 2008
Sleep: 3 Fatigue: 2
General Comments:
did some yoga and massager to work on left leg. Felt good. Calf strain healing.
Run - Easy
Duration: 00:34:00
Distance: 3.0 mi
Pace: 11:19/mi
Time of Day: pm
Exertion: 3 Gear: Nike Vomeros
Comments: really humid after rains. Thought it would be cooler, but humidity was rough. Left foot a little tingley. Ran with Roxy. Calf felt strained, but not painful.
TUESDAY Jul. 15, 2008
Sleep: 3 Fatigue: 3 Soreness: 2 Stress: 3
General Comments: Left calf a little sore after last night’s run. Hit it and left forefoot with massager after this AM’s run. That felt gooooooooood.
Run - Tempo
Duration: 01:00:01
Distance: 6.6 mi
Pace: 09:05/mi Time of Day: am
Exertion: 5 Gear: Nike Vomeros
Comments: Amazing run. Went as fast as comfortable. AM running is the only way to go in the Texass summers. Listened to Asian mix on iPod. Yummers.
Yoga - Easy
Duration: 00:20:00
Time of Day: pm
Exertion: 5
WEDNESDAY Jul. 16, 2008
Sleep: 4 Fatigue: 4 Soreness: 2 Stress: 3
General Comments:
Left calf improving. Left foot irritated after finishing run.
Yoga - Easy
Duration: 00:20:00
Time of Day: am
Exertion: 5
Description:
Yogamazing - Gulf of Mexico Comments:
quick, fast, good session.
Run - Easy
Duration: 01:00:00
Distance: 6.1 mi
Pace: 09:55/mi Time of Day: pm
Exertion: 4 Gear: Nike Vomeros
Description: round the hood.
Comments: Started off sluggish. Ramped up as it went on. Finished great. Left ball of foot got irritated towards end. Left calf doing great!
THURSDAY Jul. 17, 2008
HealthLog not updated
Run - Easy
Duration: 01:00:00
Distance: 5.7 mi
Pace: 10:31/mi Time of Day: am
Exertion: 3
Gear: Nike Vomeros
Comments: started off sluggish and mostly crappy. Had to walk a few times. Finished feeling OK.
Run - Tempo
Duration: 00:56:07
Distance: 6.0 mi
Pace: 09:23/mi Time of Day: pm
Exertion: 6 Gear: Nike Vomeros
Description:
round tha hood Comments:
Breakthrough run. Never ran this fast this far with this low of a perceived effort. Waited to start until 9:30 PM and run under full moon. Cool breeze. Awesome.
FRIDAY Jul. 18, 2008
HealthLog not updated
No workouts logged.
SATURDAY Jul. 19, 2008
Sleep: 2 Soreness: 3
General Comments: Got a nice nap in this afternoon.
Run - Easy
Duration: 01:02:28
Distance: 6.1 mi
Pace: 10:14/mi Time of Day: am
Exertion: 3 Gear: Nike Vomeros
Description: round tha hood.
Comments: Way too hot to be enjoyable. Tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. Eating ice works really well.
SUNDAY Jul. 20, 2008
Sleep: 3 Fatigue: 4 Soreness: 4 Stress: 4
General Comments:
Felt crazy good after today’s run. Energy galore!
Run - Tempo
Duration: 02:31:53
Distance: 17.0 mi
Pace: 08:56/mi Time of Day: am
Exertion: 7 Gear: Nike Vomeros
Description: Around the hood and Nantucket.
Comments: WOW! Felt amazing, and finished feeling great! Oatmeal & Coffee for breakfast and then HJ through the whole run. Also gatorade, nuun, and honey packets from whataburger. Did the Galloway run-walk method. HR Max: 173
HR Avg: 146
Well, today’s workout was a little unconventional…
- One lawnmower fixed
- One lawn mowed
- Two dogs washed
- 600m swim in the neighborhood pool
I would also like to invite anyone to provide a caption for the following photo in the comments section…
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