Ragnar Los Coyotes: Exit Light, Enter Night

When last I blogged, we'd finished up our first set of daytime legs at Ragnar Los Coyotes, and we were about to enter Ragnar After Dark (RAD).  RAD is always an interesting time of an overnight relay; you're tired from running several legs and not recovering properly, your body is having severe disagreements with your watch about what time it actually is, and everyone is generally pretty stupid, overall.

So, in the Friday morning blog, I believe we left off with Bryan starting out his leg, which was a spin around green.  That meant our final runner in rotation, Kelly, was starting her first leg, around yellow, bringing the team back to Runner 1 again, me!  As she got ready to head out, Kelly grabbed some shots of the campsite as the sun dwindled down:

That's Chris over there on the left,

hanging out in my chair,

and Matt way on the right
(the other sleeping bag - you can't see his face)

still using Jen's chair.

Another set of campsites near us.

She also grabbed some selfies with Jen before she started out on her leg:

I couldn't pick just one -

they're both so cute!

Photos courtesy of Kelly.

Although the moon was on its way to being full (and the supermoon at that!), it was still pretty dark out here at night, and a good headlamp was essential.  As you saw in the dirty foot picture in the last blog, it was hella dusty on these trails, and one of the hazards of night running here was being behind someone and pretty much living in his/her dust cloud, which in the glow of a headlamp, turned into a seeming impenetrable wall of white light.  It was special.  A few shots from Kelly's spin around yellow:

The fire road hike at night - 

a bit lamer than during the day,

as you can't even see the scenery

Pretty much what all night trail running looks like.

You can generally see some gorgeous stars

if you look up, but if you do,

you run the risk of eating it, big-time.

Most of your view looks like this.

Since yellow was pretty short, I knew I'd be up soon, so I suited up and headed down to the transition tent at the appointed time.  I waited and waited and waited a bit more, eventually starting to become somewhat concerned about Kelly.  The general Ragnar rule of thumb is to wait twice as long as your runner should have taken to complete his/her loop before notifying medical staff, and we were coming up on that timeframe when I saw our team name hop onto the monitors.  Thankfully, Kelly wasn't hurt; instead, she missed the yellow trail head sign and hiked another mile up the goddamn fire road to the red trail head.  Knowing that wasn't right, she asked the next runner up where she was, and he directed her to yellow; of course, she then had to backtrack another mile downhill to the start of the true yellow loop.  I figure if she really wanted to run extra, Jen, Chris, or I would have let her take one of our "bonus" legs; maybe next time (kidding!  She doesn't want to run extra loops, as she's not clinically insane.  I don't think).

Anyway, I kicked off our team's second set of legs with my official spin around red.  Since I'd already done red, and I knew how awful it was, I really wasn't looking forward to it, particularly the sketchy loose downhill sections after the fire road climb.  As it turned out, I started hiking up the fire road next to a gentleman who seemed to be on something very close to my pace (read: slow moving).  As we hiked, we started chatting, and we ended up doing the entire loop together.  It was really great to have a buddy to do the loop with, and although we'll probably never run into each other again, I was very grateful to spend a solid two hours with my new running friend Geo and learn about his life.  In the time we were out on the trail, we covered just about everything from jobs to family to politics (also, 90's movie quotes. Me: "Dusty, we have debris!"  That one was for Chris - he luuuurves Twister), and it really made the time fly by.  It was still hard, but we kept encouraging each other, taking walk breaks and picking up the pace when we could; since Geo was a Marine and Chris was former Navy, he shook Chris' hand at the transition tent, they exchanged "thank you for your service"s, and he headed out to his teammates, as I stumbled back to our campsite.  Thanks, Geo, wherever you are, bud, and congrats on becoming a first-time Dad in another 7 months or so (as I may have mentioned, we had ample time to discuss everything currently happening in our lives).

After getting back to camp and into warm, dry clothes (trying not to scream out loud as I cleaned my feet with baby wipes - this race was trashing every part of me - lest I wake Matt, once again slumbering in Jen's chair), I ate some cookie cake and attempted to grab some sleep.  It was rough going, and I couldn't get warm enough to sleep in the tent, so I figured I would head outside into the night air and just enjoy the experience.  As I've mentioned in previous Ragnar blogs, I normally have a "I hate Ragnar" moment round about this time in every relay, and this time, I could tell it was coming.  I tried to stave it off by taking some pictures around the camp and exploring my phone's nighttime shot capturing ability.  First, shots of the campsite itself:

Check out that sweet LED wiring!

The camp with some phantom runners.

These didn't turn out as cool as I wanted,

but they're still sort of fun.

I then moved on to taking shots of some runners themselves, just for fun:

Someone starting his/her loop.

Don't know who it is or what loop.

Might be someone we know,

but it probably isn't.

The (almost) full moon

over tents and runners.

Eventually, I talked myself up from my low point (I ate a wrap and had a lovely moment in the Andy Gump - that really does make all the difference in the world), and I watched my teammates come and go on their night legs.  Chris went out and came back without issue, after doing his green-yellow back to back combo.  Here he is, most likely updating the log book with his time - we were about three hours behind at this point:

Photo courtesy of Kelly.

Those are her feet in the foreground.

I think this is when I was attempting to sleep in the tent.

Jen did her red loop and reported seeing a few folks tumbling down the side of various hills (like I said: sketchy conditions, yo), and Jake headed out on green.  By this time, it was around midnight, and temps were cold.  In addition to easy runner sightings, one of the advantages of our campsite being right on the transition tent path was that it was super easy to keep your warm gear on you, start out your loop, then run it back to the campsite on your way out to the trails, ditching it with your teammates after you'd warmed up a bit.  When Jake came into camp at the start of his loop, Matt and I were awake and ready to grab his puffy coat; he tried to insist he was taking it with him, but we quickly talked him out of that.  He didn't give us feedback on whether this was a good idea or not, but at least his coat was still warm and dry when he got back to it a bit later (had he taken it with him, it would have been sweaty, cold, and dusty, which would be lame).

After Jake came in from green, Matt headed out on yellow, then Bryan on red, and Kelly on green.  Chris was passed out inside the tent, making the most of his down time (you could hear the snoring from outside the tent, and Matt, Jake, and I counted ourselves impressed with Chris' set of lungs).  During most of this, I found myself able to grab short bits of sleep curled up in my camp chair inside my sleeping bag and every item of clothing I'd brought with me.  By this point, I was wearing: a sports bra and runderoo's, a long sleeved tech running shirt, running compression tights, fleece pants over the tights, a thermal henley over the shirt, a fleece jacket, a puffer jacket over the fleece, knee-high SmartWool socks, a knit cap, gloves lined with thermal fleece, a scarf, my Breaking Rag Tyvek hazmat suit, and all of this was inside my sleeping bag.  And my feet were still cold. 

Actually, funny story about the feet - after watching me put on layer after layer of clothing and listening to me complain about my feet constantly being cold, Matt expressed the point of view that maybe I didn't need more/new socks, but maybe I needed to see a doctor about what seemed to be circulatory problems.  "Wait!" he proclaimed after offering this opinion - "have you been wearing compression gear the entire time?"  When I acknowledged that I had, he gave me a look and commented on something that all of us should know regarding how compression gear slows down your circulation even more than normal in the areas not being compressed.  My tights stopped at my ankles, hence my feet were colder even than normal.  Everyone's at their smartest around 2am, to be sure.

Anywhoo, after seeing Kelly run past the campsite (Kelly: "Hi, it's Kelly!  I'm leaving on my leg!  Tell Amy!" Me: "Kelly, I am Amy!  Hi!" It was really dark), I started to get my act together, filling up my hydration flasks and putting my gear in order.  This was the coldest of my runs, and while I originally intended to run in my normal running tights, the poor state of my legs made my compression tights necessary.  Although yellow would be my shortest leg, it still had lots of uphill on the fire road and punishing, technical downhills, and my quads were trashed by this point.  Although I was probably feeling a bit overdramatic at the time (likely), I really felt that without compression tights, my muscle fibers might start to actually unravel on me (this is totally legit science, by the way).  

Kelly came flying into the transition tent, and I grabbed the race belt, heading out at what can only be described as a shuffle.  My toes felt frozen, and my legs were so stiff, I could barely move.  I hobbled past camp and ditched my puffy jacket with Chris, who later admitted that he immediately thought, "oh, this will take awhile."  I continued my death march through the rest of the campsites and once again started up the freaking fire road of doom.  Truly, however, the fire road climb was probably a good thing to happen to me at this time, as it gave my legs a chance to really warm up without too much speed being thrown at them.  By the time I hit the actual trailhead, I was ready to kick things up and find a better gear.  While still slow, by the time the technical bit stopped and we were just cruising downhill, I was moving once more.

This is where I'd normally put a graph of my Suunto data, but after mistakenly leaving it running after my second tear around red, when I put it on before this loop, I realized I had 5% battery capacity left. Oops (my second red loop is recorded on the Suunto as taking 5 hours.  While it felt that long, that's about 3 hours over the actual time).  It cut out on me 1.5 miles into this loop, so I don't have my blazing fast speeds (warning: excessive sarcasm alert) near the end properly recorded.

I came storming into the tent under my own power and handed the race bib off to Chris, who was about to start his twirl around red, his final loop.  Camp was starting to stir again, as it was 6am by this point (with us running 5.5 hours behind schedule), and light was starting to come back into the day.  Best of all, I WAS DONE RUNNING!  It was time to celebrate, get into warm clothes, eat more cookie cake, and support the rest of my team.

In the next blog, we bring it home and finish this mother!

Later!

Amy