Ragnar Relay Race Report And Coming Out Witness Protection

Running in my super cool Trakkers kit and wicked fast
Avia Quest Lite. 

Gang!

I'm back!!

Really!!!

I know what you're thinking "...sure we've heard this all before. He builds us up with the anticipation of these stellar blog posts—complete with his self-proclaimed witty humor, and over the top sarcasm—and just toys with our poor emotions as we are left stranded wondering if he is going to end up on the back of a milk carton, or need to be relocated to Sioux City, Iowa for a crime he witnessed at a high-profile Italian eatery."

Nope, neither of those. I have just had the busiest year of my life. I had been commuting an hour to work five, sometimes six days a week all year. Twice a week, I did not get home until after 9 p.m., and there were times that I was enjoying my dinner at midnight! Okay, enough of this 'woe is me' me type rhetoric, now on for the good stuff.

About eight months ago I saw one of those advertisements on Facebook that runs along the sidebar that read something about Ragnar Relay. I never pay attention to adds, or so I thought, but on this particular occasion I decided I would check it out. And so I did. Ragnar Relay is a running race series that has teams of up to twelve members compete in a relay that runs for—in our case—197 beautiful miles of New York state. And so, I thought to myself, "197 miles in a van with eleven other runners who are going to be tired, cranky, stinky, and hungry by the end of the experience.... what could possibly go wrong?" Coincidentally, the phrase "what could possibly go wrong?" became my mantra throughout the Ragnar experience. You see, with five children, I have the attitude that you just have to roll with some things in life otherwise you are going to be confined to a straightjacket wondering where it all went wrong. It was right there while reading the Ragnar message and what the race entailed that I decided that this all seemed completely crazy, and was therefore obligated to try to run this thing with eleven of my soon-to-be closest friends (whether they liked it or not). The first thing I did was post a message on The Facebook to four hundred or so of my closest friends asking who was "in?" What I soon realized is that most well-adjusted people with careers, families, and household projects are not easily eager to commit to something this undeniably stupid, er... insane, er... ambitious?   Needless to say, I got a couple of "hey, that sounds like a really cool thing. How far is it again?" messages. The usual suspects: Adam, Scott, and Manuel were way overextended with some other things to be able to commit to this race in early May. Then, I had a stroke of brilliance (yes, I am sometimes struck with the rare brilliant idea). I will ask my Trakkers teammate, Kelly C. and her husband to take part in this. Kelly did a 50 K earlier during the year.... she's crazy... she's likely to do this. Alas, Kelly at first said "yes" then regretfully had to decline because she had some boring wedding to attend... (just kidding Kelly). The first person who committed to doing the relay was the wifey. We have been looking into doing some unconventional races together for some time. More on that later. The next person who committed to doing with was my friend Sarah. Next was my friend Mike whom I work out with at my YMCA. Next came my friend Ryan, another young cat, who I know from the Y. Actually, I know almost half of the team because of my relationship with the YMCA. Below is a picture of the team complete with their official Ragnar nicknames, designated by team captain (me) based on my Ragnar experience with them.

From l to r: Danny "Talker" Vandonginator VanDongen, Terry "Pinky" Christo, Greg "Chef" Christo, Nicholas "Honey Badger" Grenses, "It's not Ryne, it's Ryan" Ryan "Camel" McClean, Mitch "Instigator" Mitchell, Mike "Squirrel" Texiera, Sharon "Sunshine" Mitchell, Me "Gimpy", Sarah "Stealth" Beyler, and Derek "Franchise" Lockhart

Oh, where is wifey?  Yeah, it's been a bit since the last blog post, eh? Wifey decided that on one spring like afternoon she would get on my son Luca's Ripstick (kind of like a skateboard, but with only two wheels) without helmet or elbow pads. Needless to say, this did not end well. After a trip to the hospital, an MRI to look for a concussion and several stitches to close her grapefruit-sized swollen elbow, it was back to the house. As if it could not get any worse, a few days after removing her stiches, her bursar sack ruptured and fluid flew out of elbow in the manner of bad special effects in a B movie. Sadly, wifey will have to wait for the next one. I was REALLY disappointed. I wanted to share this experience with her.

Here is our ex-Pentacostal church van. I am NOT kidding!

I almost did not think the race was actually going to happen for my team. With less than two weeks left to go before the race, we did not have hotel reservations, transportation, any idea of who was going to run what legs, what to bring, etc. Yup, this is just how I roll. What I soon learned is that everyone was up to their eyeballs with work, and like me, this is a group that does not panic, but merely says "okay... how are we going to make this happen?" In one meeting over a few beers a week before the race, we hashed out everything and I ordered the perfect van from a place called "Clover's Clunkers." The official Ragnar race "bible" suggests that teams of 12 have two passenger vans. Their theory/recommendation/take, is that with two vans, you could have your first six runners run while the other six sleep/rest/play crazy eights, etc. Somehow, I had this sneaking suspicion that a relay race that traverses over 197 miles that will last roughly anywhere from 25-DNF hours is not likely to have a lot of of downtime. The other thing is that, it really does not matter if you try to sleep during the day (at least for me), when it's nighttime and you are use to going to sleep at say, eleven p.m., or midnight, your body wants to crash. I knew that it would not matter that I was well rested. This is just a really drawn out way to basically tell you I was too cheap to go with a second passenger van, but instead ordered one 15-passenger van for the trip. When we sat down for those beers, we (the six members of the team that could make it (Mike, Terry, Greg, Mitch, Nick, and me) projected a fairly realistic pace time of about 9 minute miles. If we did this, we would finish the race in just under 30 hours. Unfortunately, our seed times were all based on some pretty optimistic 10k times. The Ragnar committee gave us a 10:00 a.m. starting time. The only problem was that the finish was only open until 5 o'clock. If we miscalculated and actually ended up running slower, incurred an unexpected injury, or our wonderful $60 a day 15-passenger van decided to suddenly not perform up to expectations (running and breaking on steep hills), we might be facing a poor time, or worse, a DNF, or worse yet, death at the hands of a Ford Ecoliner.

We stayed the night in Liberty, New York, just down the road from the famous sight of the 1969 Woodstock concert. In fact, the start of the relay was actually at the historic concert sight! I thought this sign was hysterical. Nothing is allowed onto the sight that actually made this a great experience in the first place. Okay one to the race...

It would take a manuscript the length of the Harry Potter series (which I finished by the way) to tell you about everyones legs, and all the crazy and amazing things we saw along the way. Let's just say that my team surely rose to the occasion and ran their proverbial asses off with a total time of 25:03:46. Not bad, right? That is a team pace of 7:38 over 197 miles. The amazing thing is I actually think that had circumstances been a bit different, we may actually have run it slightly faster. Unfortunately, I was "nursing," "coping," "bearing as much pain as I could possibly withstand" throughout the race. (More on the knee later).  So, taking one 15-passenger van meant being at the next exchange in time for the runner who was out there. Sometimes it was difficult. There were a couple of legs that were only 1.9 and 2.4 miles long. If you have someone running low 7:00 minute miles, you barely have time to drive to the next exchange, get your next runner out and cheer on the next exchange. We gobbled on stuff throughout the trip: peanut butter pretzels, banana muffins, a huge bag of granola (thanks to the large team of runners that stayed at the hotel with us who left it in conference room at breakfast time). We, uh... borrowed it.... forever. I had a peanut butter sandwich somewhere along the way, and a local fire house put together a spaghetti dinner or turkey wraps for dinner when we arrived at one of the exchanges at 7:30 on Friday. It cost $8.00 dollars. My cousin Danny and I had $12 dollars between us when we got to the exchange and some runner offered to make up the difference of the rest of our meal. Very cool. Whoever you were—thanks!

Our team had two Ragnar magazines that had detailed printouts of every leg of the race with their ratings: Easy/Moderate/Hard/ and Very Hard. Personally, I had one moderate, a hard, and then finished with a very hard run. It was a beautiful trail run. The first two miles were  straight uphill. I almost went the wrong way when I set out to run my last leg. I got to a point in the trail that looked like  a pool of mud and said.. "certainly I am not suppose to run through this." I was incorrect in my thinking. So, I ran back down and started to set off on a different trail when I heard my teammates yell, "No... Mark!  You were going the right way!!" Oops.

The one thing that I would warn people of who are considering running Ragnar New York is that you should be prepared to run hills—a lot of them! It was as if the race director went out and said, "...hey, where are the biggest hills to punish these people?"  Well, if pictures tell a thousand words, I guess I am in luck. I have been absent for a while, and I do not think words can really capture the essence of Ragnar race experience.

Here are some pictures from the race:

I called PETA shortly after taking this pic. 

The legend continues. 

I don't know why, but I just think of Bananrama, parachute pants,
Flashdance, and MC Hammer whenever I look at this picture. 

This is one fast viking!

Don't ask, don't tell. 

This takes guts... or underpants.... 

We would have faired pretty well in this category as well!

.. but well worth it!

Showing off her bootie for the camera, these runners
were rocking the 90's metal scene. 

I love this picture! A well deserved rest. 

This race has inspired me to want to try the Rev 3 Adventure Race Series next year. Okay, I hope I did some justice to this amazing race experience.

More soon!  Train Smart!

The Friday Top Five (On Sunday)

I've thought about this a while now, and in an effort to have a consistent piece on this blog, I have decided to have what I will henceforth refer to as "The Friday Top Five." In this new "piece" I will continue to subject you all to my completely biased, subjective opinions on matters of triathlon and anything else I feel like torturing you with. Your welcome in advance for the forty-some remaining weeks of the calendar year. Alas! Look on the bright side: if the Mayans are correct, you should only have to put up with my insipid verbiage for but one more year. If I were a betting man, my guess is that the universe will not implode on itself to the size of an atom, and that you will have to go on living with my acute, yet banal, observations and growing neuroticism. Lucky you.

This semester, I am teaching the greatest class in the history of classes taught at the college level—History of Rock and Roll. I have noticed a really interesting phenomenon with my teenage and twenty-something year old students. They know a lot of music from the late 1960's and early 1970's (much more than the generation of students ten years their seniors), because of things like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Others, now have parents that grew up in the generation after the Baby Boomers who actually rocked out to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones. Most of my students know music from a really narrow window from about 1968-1978. Seriously, most of my students were born after Nirvana's Nevermind was released on Geffen back in 1991. Obviously rock and roll music did not start in 1991, although grunge certainly did, and soon became a widespread commodity to a growing number of white middle class teenagers—just like every other style of music before and after it. Of course, grunge was around before Nirvana. Bands like Sonic Youth and Mudhoney helped to coin the term when talking about their own music, but I remember Nirvana being one of the defining moments of my young musical career. Here were these three white dudes from Seattle playing music that rocked even harder than anything I had ever heard on MTV's Headbangers Ball back in the late 1980's, and they were doing so while donning flannel, torn jeans and sneakers, instead of hair with an insane amount of Aqua Net, and enough makeup and spandex to make Roxanne blush. I knew immediately upon hearing Nirvana—without ever hearing anything from the music rags and talking heads—that this band was definitely ground breaking. Did not end well. I love being able to speak anecdottaly about my experiences with the music. It is really hard to feel "old" talking about Nirvana because I still think of them as really current.

Anyway, one of the things that I get to speak is who I think the best rock singers in history are (I have a PhD in Music—I'm able to decide such things). Throughout the semester, we get to engage with all of this great music and the artists who recorded it.

Without further adieu, here are my Top Five singers in rock and roll history, with some honorable mentions:

 #1: Freddie Mercury: Not a good looking man, but apparently rock singers do not need to be attractive for throngs of women (and men) to go completely hysterical at the mere sight of them (see: Mick Jagger, Steven Tyler, and David Bowie). You've never seen as many lighters in the air as when Freddy sang Bohemian Rhapsody to an appreciative Wembley Stadium crowd. His voice is dynamic and identifiable, and he can belt it and sing the ballad.

#2: Robert Plant: The lion-maned frontman of one of the most influential rock groups in history—Led Zeppelin admittedly modeled his singing after early African-American blues singers  Ma Rainey and Big Mama Thorton. He had an incredible stage presence and when I listen to Zeppelin tunes like "Black Dog," "Rock and Roll," or "Kashmir" on my iPod while I am training, I have to control my testosterone from making me want to run through walls.

#4 Ozzy Osbourne: Even if you do not like his music, this one-time frontman for Black Sabbath whose career has spanned over forty years, had an unbelievable dynamic range an had some of the most incredible intonation (ability to sing on pitch) of any rock singer in history. The Prince of Darkness and Godfather of Heavy Metal has sold over 100 million albums worldwide. That is more than John Tesh and Yanni combined. His reality T.V. show, The Osbournes, introduced a whole new generation to the lifestyle of rich and underserving privileged children of rock icons.

#5: John Lennon: C'mon, what would a list of the greatest rock singers of all time be without the man who sang I Want to Hold Your Hand and Helter Skelter? Those two tunes have dramatically different vocal styles. More, Lennon could be expressive and lyrical with tunes like "Nowhere Man," and deliver in the stuttering vocal declamation of "Come Together." Like Mozart (who lived to only thirty-five years), it would have been fascinating to hear what Lennon's musical output would have been like had his life not been tragically cut short.

#5 Steve Parry: I know what you're thinking, Steve Parry, really.. are you sure you don't mean Steven Tyler. No. I feel funny putting Parry here, because the music is a bit cheesy. Okay, it's a lot cheesy, and I am embarrassed to admit that I can sing just about every lyric from every tune Journey wrote.
The once frontman of the rock band Journey had an amazing instrument—not to mention wrote some of the most catchy rock tunes of the late eighties. Heck, Journey even had a video game. You know you've made it when you have a video game. I think everyone who went to school in the eighties had the tunes "Open Arms" or "Faithfully" as one of the themes for their school dances. The school dance tune was swiftly replaced for the next ten years by the Boyz II Men song "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday."

Honorable Mentions: David Lee Roth, Sting, Bono, Janis Joplin, Roger Daltrey, Jim Morrison

Now, for all you talking heads out there, notice, I did not say most influential. That would be a completely different list. Dylan would be on that top five. Coincidentally, Rolling Stone listed the top 100 singers of all time. Number one on the list was Aretha Franklin. I might have to agree with that analysis. She can sing everything.

Training: Have you ever had one of those weeks that has completely kicked your ass? Wow. I was SO incredibly busy with work and my personal life this week that trying to fit in my training was.... well... insane!  I missed a couple of workouts, but I tried not to miss consecutive swims or bikes or runs. I missed one swim and one bike. I am a slacker, what can I say? I feel awfully guilty, but I have so many projects on the burner that I really have to concentrate on.

The good news? I got fitted for my new Kestrel (post to follow). It is beautiful, and the fitting was amazing. I have never been as comfortable on a bike as I am on this one—really!  I think my Trakkers teammates are going to be VERY excited about their new rides—especially those of us who live near the Arctic Circle who will not have a chance to bike outside until say... our first triathlon in June. Okay, I am exaggerating a bit, but just a bit.

My hydration during my workouts has been a lot better thanks in part to my First Endurance drink. I have both the Grape and Fruit Punch flavors and enjoy them when I train. I have a tendency to cramp up, especially in my swim because I often forget to hydrate as much as I should during the day. If you have not tried First Endurance yet, I highly recommend that at the very least, you get on board and try it for a couple of weeks of workouts. I like it because it is not real sugary either.

Okay gang, my Kestrel post to follow. Another busy week, but I hope to be communicating from the craziness.

More Soon. Train Smart!

Running in Ragnar And Ready for Redemption

Being sick for ten days has really sucked. I sometimes will express my hatred of being sick to the wifey.
She finds it especially funny when I complain about having the stomach bug. No one ever says, "you know... I haven't had chronic diarrhea and vomited in a while, that would be really great." Having the flu is the absolute worst. I'm not there. I just have this chronic cough and chest cold that is making working out impossible. Have any of you ever had that experience when you feel so awful that it is tiring to climb the stairs?  I know when I am really sick, because when I lay down in bed, I just crash as if I hadn't just gotten a full night of sleep. I tried "taking it easy" for a couple of days. I tried working out through my sickness. That just made it a bit worse. Because my throat has felt slightly sore, I have not wanted to drink, so I have been getting dehydrated.

I am ready to announce some pretty amazing news.

I am racing a 24-hour relay in May called the Ragnar Relay. Ragnar has a bunch of relays all over the country. I decided that doing this would be:

1) fun
2) slightly crazy
3) a great story to tell my grandchildren
4) possibly life-threatening (in the dark, there could be bears out there in the middle of the wilderness, ya know)
5) A rare opportunity to spend a day with eleven of my tired, hungry, smelly friends.
6) A fun preparation for Rev3 Quassay and Rev3 Cedar Point.

The course starts at Colony of the Arts in Woodstock, New York and finishes in New York City.

The best part about doing THIS race is that the wifey has signed up with me! Wifey does not do a lot of races on account of:

1) her dislike of running

2) she is not competitive at ALL. I think it is a dancer thing. Every dancer I know is non-competitive. I think it has something to do with the aesthetic. 

I think wifey also agreed to do this race because it is slightly crazy. The wifey likes slightly crazy things, thus, me! Here is the best part. There is something you do not know about wifey. She's a legitimate ringer. She might not train a ton now, but she has serious game. Like, way more game than I could possibly hope to have. Let me put things into perspective for you:

Wifey was invited to the Lake Placid Olympic development camp in high school. One day, last summer, my wife decides to go out and run my 10k course for giggles. Wifey does not train. Wifey runs the occasional 5k on a treadmill at the gym two or three times a week. Wifey goes out and runs 6:15's. She comes back sweating and a bit tired, but not in need of oxygen like I would have been. 

So, the breakdown of the running for the twelve of us will look something like this:

I really do not care what leg I run. I just think this will be an absolute blast. The hardest part of the race for Alaina and I will not be staying up all night and running, but rather, trying to find someone to watch out brood for four days. 

In Other News: My Garmin 310XT heart rate monitor decided to completely die. Crazy. The funny thing is my Timex Ironman race kit is still taking a licking and ticking. Garmin replaced my monitor two days later, and I am happy to say that I have a heart rate again. 

Training: I finally worked out yesterday for the first workout since Saturday. I did a two hour ride on Saturday that left me feeling terrible again. Since coming back from Seattle two weeks ago, I feel like I have not been more than 85%. I got in the pool last  night and did 3000 yards in one hour. I actually swam 2500 free, then started on my 800 kick. Yes, I used fins. Otherwise I would still be there. I think I could have done a bit more if it was not my first workout back in a few days off. However, when I hit the wall at 500 yards into the kick, my right leg started severely cramping. Dehydration is such an odd feeling. 

On the docket are a one hour zone two run tonight and a one hour tempo run tomorrow. With almost a week off from running, it will be interesting to see how my body reacts.  I think I vaguely remember how to run. 

More soon. Train Smart!