RAGNAR Relay 2013 Chicago

Another successful Ragnar is officially in the books for the Keckler Family. You know about it by now, 195 miles from Madison to Chicago. Doesn’t sound that bad, right, maybe 3 hours depending on traffic? Well, that’s what it would be like to virtually every friend or family member we know who reads this blog. Instead, for Holly, Kevin and six other friends it took us 34.5 hours to leave the land of Cheese and Beer to the Windy City.

Getting to know our new teammates by playing Cards Against Humanity

That’s not a typo! 34.5 hours. Sounds crazy considering we had no car troubles and traffic couldn’t have been any better. The problem is we RUN those 195 miles (or 198.8 if our new friend Karil is counting). And this year was particularly interesting since Kevin turned in his driving gloves and caffeine for running shoes and Gatorade.

As difficult to figure out as a magic show, but I was able to make it through my portion – 28.9 miles.
With the support of a great team and some occasional pre-race training, I successfully completed six legs ranging from 2.9 miles up to 6.2 (I still hate you leg 5!). It was definitely a challenge, but really satisfying, as well.

Holly finished her third Ragnar and came away injury free. She was my “tag” partner taking runner number 3’s position. The weather was great topping out in the mid 70’s and even getting down to the mid 40’s on Friday night. The Squirrel Van (most appropriate name considering our team name) was guided by my sales rep – Quentin – and once again navigated beautifully through multiple tiny towns and the big city by neighbor Amy!

Our van drew quite a bit of attention this year.  More than once people stopped to take pictures.

Eating Denny's Pizza at our favorite exchange in Dousman, WI

Running mates this year were veterans Tom, Matt and Taryn. Our newcomer was Karil, who was a
particularly super sport and as close to the Energizer Bunny as we could have requested.  The immediate reaction after you complete a Ragnar is a mixed bag of pride, exhaustion and “why the
hell did I just do that to my body?” And no sooner than we all agreed this was likely the last Ragnar for
our Ultra group, somehow Tom was asking for volunteers to run another in August. That won’t happen
in 2013, but as this year did prove, anything is possible!

And the best news yet, we just found out late last week that we placed 2nd in the Ultra Mixed Submasters!