Ragnar Florida Keys: Leg 1

After sleeping a reasonable seven hours (given that my pre-Ragnar sleep patterns generally involve three hours of sleep and five hours of staring at a ceiling, this was positively decadent for me - I took a Benadryl the night before), I crept into the alcove between the living and bedrooms of the suite at the Hampton Inn to work on class for awhile.  I was soon joined by both Taira and Scott, so we headed down to breakfast.  Taira had to run back upstairs for shoes (apparently, they have standards at this Hampton Inn), and eventually, the rest of the team joined us; we checked out of the hotel to head on our way.

Scott's a tall dude anyway, so when he wears the bear coat, he really stands out, and people who see him tend to lose their sh*t.  The ladies at the front desk of the Hampton Inn were no exception.

All the ladies love the bear coat

Since we were Van 2 of Team Bearizona, after we checked out of the Hampton Inn, we headed to Exchange 6, Tamiami Park in Miami, where we would go through our safety briefing and take the running over from Van 1.

Riding in the Bear Force One!

Erin, Scott, Murph, and Taira, all smiles so far

Your Ragnar start time is based off your team's overall expected pace, and since Ragnar wants most of the teams to cross the finish line at roughly the same time, the faster teams start later in the day.  Since our Van 1 runners were all crazy fast (I think the slowest expected pace in that van was an 8:00 mile - holy crap!), our team ended up with an 11:00am start time, which meant we would take over from Van 1 around 2pm.

Here's Runner 1 for our team, Sarah, coming through the starting line arch - 

that's her in the pink, black, and white striped tank top.

Behind Adam Duritz of Counting Crows.

We had about 45 minutes of driving to make it to Exchange 6, so we hopped on the Florida Turnpike and almost immediately lost one of the door decals Jim made for us.  Dang it!  Thankfully, he foresaw this possibility and made us extra posters.  After we arrived at the exchange, we secured another to the driver's side door with packing tape.

The Bear Force One, in all of her mustachioed glory.

Isn't she grand?

Next, it was on to collect our safety flags, go through the briefing, and get Chris ready for his run.

Murph, collecting our important information.

The things Captains have to do.

Check out that effervescing Nuun!

You can't run properly without a giant bag of GORP

Temporary tattoo madness!*

Go team 455!

Chris, ready to run!

Van 1 parked, then came over to where we were standing, and we all introduced ourselves (some of us knew each other, but for others, this was the first meeting).  Apparently, one of the ladies in the van pointed out a dude in a giant bear costume upon which Luis, my buddy and Coach, went, "oh, yes, that's our other van!"  We do make quite the impression.

After handing the slap bracelet off to Chris, Runner 6 (Ryan) and the rest of Van 1 were off to rest and eat while we ran our first set of legs.  I think most of us would agree these were not our favorite legs.  Although the race is billed as the Florida Keys, in order to make up 200 miles, you start in Miami and wind around there for the first third of the race or so before heading to the Keys proper. Thus, all of our first legs were in the city, on the blacktop, in the suburbs.  We encountered traffic lights, stop signs, interstate crossings (my first leg had a freeway entrance and exit ramp to dart across), all in the heat of the day.  It was tough going.

Don't cage me in, bro.

After Chris, I was the next runner up.  He finished his run and handed me the delightfully sweaty baton.  I was pleased to see that my longest run was first (just under 9 miles), with each of my runs decreasing in length.  That's a nice way to run Ragnar.  Here's a shot of me pounding down one of the largest inclines on my first route (it was approximately 20 feet):

Hot but beautiful.

Murph has mad Instagram skills, yo.

Finishing my run, about to hand off to Scott.

Did I mention it was hot and humid?

That's all sweat, folks.

Now...who wants a hug?

Scott took off on his leg, and we leapfrogged him to park in a neighborhood and support him as he passed by.  While we were parked, a local member of law enforcement pulled up next to us, and I thought we were about to get a talking to about parking too close to a stop sign.  Imagine our surprise when she noticed the bear in our Bear Force One logo was from the Oatmeal's site** and wanted to see the bear coat.  Word gets around, apparently, and we were happy to oblige.  When we related this to Scott, he went, "oh yeah, she had dark hair?"  We confirmed that this was so.  He mentioned that she saw him and encouraged him over her loudspeaker to "run like he stole it."  Big props to the Miami-Dade police force, as they were awesome the entire time we were there, in several important ways, this being only one of them.

EPIC.

Scott grabbed a pic of this on his run.

Ah, landscaping puns, the great equalizer.

Scott, coming in hot!

Speaking of hot, we'd been reading a few blogs about how some Keys Ragnar teams in the past had designated a "hot seat" in the van - the first seat in the side door - for everyone to sit after their run was finished and the van was moving on to support the next runner.  This meant that one seat in the van was life-alteringly gross but that only one seat was truly contaminated.  Taira read another blog that mentioned putting a cheap shower curtain liner over this seat, so the sweat didn't permeate the seat completely.  Since the van was going to be our post-race vacation transport as well, we tried this out, and it worked really well.  The shower curtain liner was truly disgusting for Runner 12 (poor Murph) but in between our running times, we sprayed it down with Febreeze and let it dry.  At the end of our three sets of legs, you needed a hazmat suit to go near it, but the rest of the van stayed relatively clean.  We'll use this again in the future.

Waiting for Scott.

At this exchange, we saw doppelgangers for both Anderson Cooper and President Obama.

Bear-ack Obama, that is!

Ragnar is really hardcore about nighttime safety, which is an awesome thing.  The year before we started doing these, someone was killed at the Ragnar Delsol 2010 due to not being visible enough at night, and the race really started cracking down since then.  That means that between 4:30pm-7:30am, everyone had to wear safety vests and while you were running, you also had to don a headlamp and blinking tailight, even if it technically wasn't sundown yet.  Poor Taira ended up being the person in our van who had to run two legs with all of the gear, even though these runs occurred while the sun was up.

Go, Safety Taira!

It was really hot out, and this was Taira's longest leg, too.

We wanted her to know she had our full backing.

Does that make us athletic supporters?

Our second stop for Taira, which involved sidewalk chalk.

An assist goes to the pirates of Team Aarrgh

for making Erin's bear face into a bear skull and bones.

After stopping to see Taira a second time, we headed to the exchange where she would be handing off to Erin.  Erin was anxious about this run, with good cause...

Not just crocodiles...crocodiles that live in the runoff water of a nuclear facility.

CROCZILLAS.

Ah, yeah, that's our van!

Murph running Erin through some warm-up lunges.

Note that Murph is the only one participating.

Getting ready to welcome Taira! 

The handoff!

We kept an eye on Erin throughout her run to ensure she didn't become croc bait (CRIKEY!), but all went well.  While waiting, we also found some coconuts, but decided not to bring them into the van.  Probably a good call.

Erin came into her exchange like a champ and Murph took off.  We supported her at a Walgreens (where we bought more ice and Scott ended up with Chex Mix), then headed to our last exchange on the first set of legs, Exchange 12, located at Homestead Speedway.  This was extremely fortuitous; Murph is a great van driver, and she's not afraid to give it some gusto when needed, so she's earned the nickname "Ricky Bobby" in our group.  How perfect for Ricky Bobby to finish her first leg with a lap up and down pit road on the NASCAR track!

At the speedway, waiting for Murph.

There she goes!

Sadly, what you can't experience from this photo is her yelling
"SHAKE AND BAKE" at the top of her lungs.

Which she did, several times. 

Bear silhouettes

Murph, shaking and baking all the way to the end!

Handing off from Sara to Sarah!

After Murph finished up, we handed the baton back to Van 1, and we were off for a few hours.  First up on the agenda was real food, then showers and shut-eye!

Coming up...the visceral experience that was Brian's trailer and our second set of legs!

Amy

* This one is temporary, but while we were walking Duval Street after the race, we saw a tattoo parlor having a special on any size actual Ragnar logo tattoo for $75.  Discount tattoos...always a good idea.

** No, I didn't ask permission to use it, but we didn't make any money off it and we didn't do anything that would compromise the spirit of the Oatmeal.  Also, we're all runners (some of us ultra runners), like the Oatmeal.  Mr. Oatmeal, please, please, please don't sue us, okay?  We love Tesla!