Thank you, Thank you, Thank you

A final accounting of my Ragnar Relay Adirondacks experience.

I am forty-eight years old (as of yesterday, in fact) and just started running in March of 2011. I have done a few short races (5Ks and 5 milers) but the crowds and port-a-potties made me so anxious I couldn't even enjoy running. Despite the fact that I was starting to run longer distances and my pace was getting better and better during training runs, no one could entice me to race in a 10K or half marathon. Then 17 weeks ago, a friend asked me to run in the Ragnar Relay Adirondacks (RagnarADK), a 193-mile relay race that goes from Saratoga Springs to Lake Placid, New York. I was drawn to the fact that I could run with a team and the members of my team who had done the Ragnar in Cape Cod told me that the relay aspect would keep me out of large crowds. I said yes.

I trained for 15 weeks straight...many weeks doing multiple 10 mile runs within a week. In two of my three months of training, I ran more than 100 miles in a month. Truly, I am the least athletic person on the planet. (I have always excelled on the artistic side -- if you need a room decorated, a play directed, or a dance choreographed, I am your girl). I was training, running crazy hills, so much so that my Mom told me she was really proud of me (that doesn't happen as much when you are almost 50 as it did when you were 8!!!)

Plus, I married my training with fundraising to providing homes for the devastatingly poor Haitians who live on sugar cane work camps in the Dominican Republic (a cause I have been committed to for more than 20 years). I would post on Facebook using my Nike Plus iPhone app and I agreed to pay $1 for every “like” I got running during all of my Ragnar Training and racing. It works like this: each time I took off on a run, my Nike Plus app announced it on Facebook. Every time a friend I am connected to “liked” my run, I would hear raucous cheering in my ears. Many times, when I was really lagging on a run, I would hear those cheers and think of the dollars raised for my poor friends in the Dominican, and it would make me teary. I even thought that after a week of people “liking” my runs, people would get sick of it and forget. If anything, the opposite happened; the closer I got to race day, the more likes and cheers came in. In total, I raised $572! Then, three Facebook friends did the extraordinary…they sent me checks to add to what I had raised on my own, bringing my fundraising total up to $767 (a hurricane-proof house costs about $4000). Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thanks for the support, the cheers, the donations. Thanks for all of it.

I have told everyone who will listen to my RagnarADK stories that it was one of the top 20 experiences of my life. Being a non-athlete, I have never been on a team before...it was transformative. I also did some of the best running I have ever done fueled by cowbells and cheers from my fellow runners in Van 2 of Team 224!!! I stepped out of my comfort zone when I said yes to the RagnarADK, and I am so, so glad I did. I learned that despite the fact that I am fast approaching 50, I still have the tenacity of my youth. I learned I love being a teammate. I learned that showing my kids that their mom isn't a quitter has power. And I learned that, like the 9th century Norse Viking after whom the Ragnar Relay is named, I am an adventure-seeking tough guy.

(And it's not to late to get involved! We don't leave for the Dominican for another month, so donations are still graciously accepted!)