When I was in the sixth grade, every kid in America had to have a Furby for the holidays. It was a battery-operated owl that was no fun to play with and looked a lot like Rob Reiner. Any time a department store announced that they had received a small shipment, people dropped everything they were doing to wait in line for hours, even though they knew they probably weren’t leaving with one.
For Team Bhatti Heat, the idea of finishing a Ragnar Trail was a lot like waiting in line to buy a Furby. When we saw the marketing emails for this year’s race in Vermont, we cleared our schedules in hopes that *this* would finally be the time that it wasn’t miserable outside.
So when I saw the forecast for Ragnar Trail Vermont, I couldn’t help but laugh. Did we slip and slide our way to another DNF? Read on to find out.
Wait, What is a Ragnar Trail Relay Again?
If you’re unfamiliar with the Ragnar Trail Relay, their marketing folks did a pretty good job of explaining it. But if you’re not in the mood to read a few hundred words about it, here’s a much shorter version:
- Teams of eight gather in the woods to camp out and run a relay race
- Each team gets up to 36 hours to run 200(ish) miles, and each person (typically) gets one night run
- There are unlimited s’mores
In ideal weather, I bet it’s a lot of fun. I’ve mentioned this before, but just watch this video and tell me it doesn’t seem like a perfectly reasonable way to spend a weekend.
Of course, we’ve never had ideal weather for one of these races. And even though things looked promising on Friday morning, our trip to Ragnar Trail Vermont was no exception.
Camping at Ragnar Trail Vermont
We arrived at Mount Ascutney a few hours before the race, which we all thought would be plenty of time to find a decent campsite. We were very wrong. In fact, the only remaining plots were up against a Holiday Inn sign on the side of a busy road.
“The downside is that you’ll likely be woken up by oncoming cars in the middle of the night,” a volunteer told us. “But at least you’re only a short walk away from the porta potties!”
On a much brighter note, I thought the main village area was a huge upgrade over what we had at Wawayanda. There were some pretty nice food trucks this time (hat tip to the Skinny Pancake) and they managed to keep the coffee jugs full all night. Considering that my biggest concern was feeding myself over the course of the weekend, I was relieved to see this.
Plus, we were only getting the occasional rain shower, so things seemed to be on the up-and-up. Joe and I kept saying to each other, “This has to be the worst of it. We’re going to have a great time out there.” In hindsight, I think we really wanted to believe what we were saying, but deep down, we also expected a tornado to break out at any moment.
Running Ragnar Trail Vermont (Friday)
There are three loops at any Ragnar Trail Relay, and everyone has to run each one at least once in order for your team to finish. Based on how the race is marketed, here’s a brief breakdown of the loops.
- The “Green Loop” is the easiest, except this is a total lie (3.1 miles)
- The “Yellow Loop” a little longer than Green (just under 5 miles)
- The “Red Loop” is designed to make grown men without souls cry (just under 8 miles)
Sarah took off for the first Green Loop at about 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon. We predicted that she’d be out there for a maximum of 30 minutes, even with the rain intensifying a bit. I was set to run the next leg, and when she arrived, she was not her usual cheery self.
“Way to finish! Is it as horrible as it seems out there?” I asked.
“Worse,” she replied.
“Well…great job!”
“I’m going to throw up.” (Spoiler: She did not throw up)
I took off for my trip around the Yellow Loop at about a 9:00 per mile clip. The first mile was a series of uphill switchbacks, so my pace quickly slowed to about 18:00 per mile. Think I’m lying? Check out my splits on Strava. By the time I got to the top of the hill, I was exasperated by the idea of running three more miles.
I didn’t get much more optimistic from there, especially after turning my ankle on a downhill. But there was a downhill stretch near the end that made me say, “Oh, this is why people do Ragnar.”
A little over 50 minutes later, I finished my first leg and handed the bib off to Sheraz and Jemilawon for the Red Loop, who wanted to run extra loops to hit some marathon training milestones. Two hours later, they were still nowhere to be seen and we started to worry.
Now that we’re all past it, I’ll admit that I had the following thoughts:
- “How is Jemilawon doing this without trail running shoes? Especially in the rain!”
- “One of them had an encounter with a cougar and we need to go save them ASAP.”
- “Maybe Sheraz and Jemilawon got out there, realized that they liked it, and decided that they were going to live in the woods forever.”
They showed up about 40 minutes later, which is when we realized that Jemilawon’s official “first” leg was next. That meant after being on a difficult trail for just under three hours, he was about to go out for more.
“Do you want to switch legs with someone?” We asked.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“…WHAT?”
For the rest of the night, we all questioned our sanity while accepting the fact that we’d likely end up on our asses a dozen more times before the end of the weekend.
At one point, we tried to get a few hours of sleep, but our neighbors didn’t make that easy. They were perfectly nice when we talked to them earlier that day, but they stayed up all night and came up with a really strange system for “showering” each other after each run. And every time one of them bellowed “SHOWER ME, SHOWER ME,” I resigned myself to the reality that I’d be running my next leg on virtually no rest.
Running Ragnar Trail Vermont (Saturday)
I’m not sure how much sleep I ended up getting, but at some point in the early morning, I gave up and decided to hang out in the village before my Green Loop. The race directors played “Grease” and “Miracle” on repeat throughout the night. Soon after I arrived, rumors started floating around that the Yellow Loop had been shortened because an insignificant stream had suddenly become a full-on waterfall.
After hearing about the adjusted course, I found “Miracle” to be the most appropriate movie for the moment. I couldn’t help but wonder if the US hockey team’s win over Russia at Lake Placid was less improbable than the thought of me running the next leg without breaking my face.
I ended up leaving for my Green Loop at around 4 a.m. in the morning, and it turned out to be even tougher than the Yellow Loop. Mud looked like rocks. Rocks looked like mud. My headlamp never seemed to stay in place, and even though the sunrise was nice to see, I caught it just as the loop veered behind a dozen porta potties. I’m convinced that the person who designed this leg fully understood the irony of that stretch of Ragnar Trail Vermont.
After I got back, we did some quick math and realized that we probably wouldn’t be done until around midnight. Most of the other teams had the same realization, so the race directors told us that they were making a revision.
Here’s what it looked like:
- Ragnar is designed for 24 individual loops. Once our 15th runner finished his or her loop, we’d go out in threes for the “final” loops.
- If your remaining loop was the Red Loop, you’d go with the other two runners who also needed to run it. Likewise for the Green and Yellow Loops.
I’ve been whining a lot, but Team Bhatti Heat was more resilient than ever. Nobody got seriously hurt, and even though we were all caked in mud, we were all enjoying hanging out together. By the time Joe, Chris, and I left for our final Red Loop, the vibe was mostly positive.
As for the Red Loop itself, Joe and Chris dropped me within the first quarter mile because my legs were toast. I had a lot of time to think about things. I thought about how I missed Jess. Then, I daydreamed about eating a chicken sandwich, or a hamburger, or a family-sized bag of Doritos. And for the entire loop, I obsessed over the fact that I wasn’t wearing a shirt and would need Sheraz to check me for ticks.
Before I knew it, we were done. We had more-than-technically run all 24 loops. And as we packed up our campsite, we all agreed that maybe it would be a good idea never to do Ragnar again.
The Results
There was some initial confusion that led me to believe we had DNF’ed again at Ragnar Trail Vermont. Since our goal was to DNDNF, we were pretty annoyed by this. Side note: We thought DNDNF stood for, “Do Not ‘Do Not Finish.'” But over the weekend, we realized it actually stood for, “Do Not ‘Did Not Finish.'” I’m still laughing at that as I write this post.
Our official time was just over 33 hours. 37th place out of the 120 teams that finished. This is a lot like when I got my SAT scores in high school and proudly proclaimed, “GOOD ENOUGH.”
Will this be our last time running a Ragnar Trail Relay? If you had asked us in the immediate aftermath of this one, we probably would have said yes. But if we’re being honest, we’ll probably start another email chain about signing up again in a few months.
Leave a Reply