Ragnar McDowell 2017: the Journey Begins

As you can tell from scanning through any of my past November posts on the blog, this is the month when we normally end up participating in one of the Ragnar Relay series of events.  Although we deviated from our normal last year and ran the Los Coyotes event in 2016, we all determined that McDowell was a much better option (in that, we didn't end it wanting to murder ourselves), so when registration opened a few months back, we hopped right on that business.

Initially, our team consisted of Chris and myself, our buddies Jen and Bryan who live in Tucson (Bryan was Chris' manager at the CVS Pharmacy in Casa Grande), my coworker, buddy, and coach Luis, my friend Christina (we met through Chris working with her husband Amadeo at Gore), our good friend Jake, and our friend Ryan.  With the exception of Christina, who was a total Ragnar newbie, all of us had Ragnar'd together before (albeit not all at the same time), so we all knew what to expect and how the event would unfold.

About six weeks before the event, Ryan called me with the sad news that he'd have to drop out due to some lingering medical concerns; although we'd miss him greatly (he brings a calming but fun energy to camp), it was in his best interest to not run during this time, and we could certainly respect that.  In his spot, we were able to recruit another friend from Tucson, Whitney, who Ragnar'd with us during McDowell in 2015; she's a close friend of Jen's and an all-around lovely person, as well as being an excellent, speedy runner (given the spate of injuries and associated PT several of us faced this year, having a few speedier folks was really helpful).

With about a week to go, Jake injured himself playing hockey, so unfortunately, he would be out of commission as well.  This left us scrambling a bit, but we figured things out relatively quickly - Luis offered to handle extra legs as needed, while Christina's husband Amadeo, who was already going to be camping with us that weekend, volunteered (he may have been volun-told, let's be honest - I think he got tag-teamed by Jake and Christina) to do a few legs as well.  While he doesn't prefer running (he's a climber, of both rock and ice), he seriously did us a solid and helped out in a major way.

Out west here in the LBC, Chris and I were getting ready to head to AZ to see the rest of the team and have fun at the event.  Since Ragnar was opening the gates to McDowell around 2pm on Thursday, we decided to drive over the night before; we knew we'd arrive late, but we figured it would be nice to wake up in Phoenix (actually, downtown Tempe) and already be close to everything.  I packed up the truck on Wednesday afternoon, and after Chris made it home from work, we hopped in and started our journey.

Although I won't be sharing tons of Ragnar prep pictures this year, rest assured, the most important part was handled properly:



This GORP is ready to go!

Since we left our house around 4pm, it took us a good three hours to make it to our dinner stop just outside Indio, which is about an hour longer than normal.  Chris killed the time by listening to a statistics lecture and studying for a finance exam, which he would have the following Tuesday morning.


I love this big ole nerd.

Our dinner was a quick meal at Rubio's, and after grabbing caffeine from Starbucks, it was back on the road with Chris driving this time.  We kept ourselves entertained by listening to his iPhone playlist and singing along.


Well, there you have it.
I'm not 100% proud of this,
but so be it.
This song is good for staying awake.

With a quick stop for cheap gas once we hit the AZ border, we finished the push toward Tempe, arriving at the Courtyard Marriott around 11:30pm.  We quickly washed faces and brushed teeth, and it was time to hit the hay!

While we had the alarm set for 7:30am, I of course woke up far earlier and busied myself reading in the bathtub:


In case you can't tell, that's John Le Carre's
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
Good stuff, that.

I heard Chris stirring a bit later (actually, he texted me "good morning" from bed), so we started getting ready for the day.  Per our already established plan, we strolled to Snooze, just a half mile away, where we enjoyed a great breakfast.  We also did some sightseeing/reminiscing along the way:


In front of Sun Devil Stadium


Someone is excited for breakfast!


Look at this tiny pitcher of cream.
Isn't it the cutest thing ever?
It's about two inches tall.


My breakfast - a sausage, egg, and cheese
sammy on a pretzel bun with a side
of cheddar hollandaise.
OMG so good.


Since we were up so early, we had some time to chill out in the hotel room before our next stop, lunch with my work team at Cornish Pasty, one of the places I miss most from this area.  Although I didn't take any pictures (dangit!  I meant to!), it was awesome catching up with Eric, Trisha, and Jesse, although we did miss having Jill along as well.  We chilled together for about an hour and a half, and as they headed out to a 1pm meeting, it was high time for us to head north to start Ragnar'ing in earnest!

On future blogs, the true Ragnar madness descends!

Later!

Amy

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