Run, Drive, Sleep...Repeat. RAGNAR RELAY!

Last weekend some friends and I drove up to New York to do the ragnar relay Friday and Saturday. It was so much fun and totally exhausting. My sister in law Heather has a great quote that totally applies in this situation: "The more miserable, the more memorable!" Totally memorable in my book: running in the middle of the night, no sleep, horrible BO smell in the car, etc. Love it!

We left early Friday morning to drive up for our 1:00 start time in Woodstock, NY. Then we proceeded to run 181 miles for 25:08 and ended the race in the Bronx (upper NYC). We had an awesome team and everyone was great runners. My van (#1) ran from 1-5ish, 11:00 pm-2:30am, and then 6:30-10:30am Saturday. Here's some action shots:

I am so sore and totally exhausted, but so glad I did it.

Here are some highlights: 1. KA getting "punked"...they changed the race course last minute and instead of running 2.9 miles, moderate difficultly for her first leg, (the categories were easy, moderate, hard, very hard) it got switched to 7.4 very hard! 2. A few of us getting lost because some genious thought the sign to turn left was the wrong way, so he switched it around. 3. Absolutely no shame about the potty business...literally. Our legs were not the only thing running, if you know what I mean. 4. KA and Ryan talking the front desk lady into letting us have a hotel room for 2 hours to take showers...and the best part of all was that it was FREE!

5. Courtney Gartz's beautiful display of the race Bible (the rules, exchange info, etc.) and Ben Harwood's excel spreadsheet predicting each runners start and finish time. This guy is amazing! He created this formula to calculate in the degree of difficulty and stuff, it was really cool. 6. Beating our predicted time by over an hour! 7. IRONMAN. So some "ultra" teams only had 6 runners instead of 12. Each person would do 2 legs. This one guy was absolutely incredible...I think he was the best athlete I've ever seen in real life. He was running at a 5:50 mile pace for like 15 miles each time!

I'm so glad I did it and I think the Fife Family is shooting for the Ragnar in Las Vegas in October! We've definitely got a whole team, thanks to in-laws. http://www.ragnarrelay.com/lasvegas/index.php . The race goes from the Valley of Fire to Lake Mead. That means no more pregnancies and stuff, ok gals? Priorities are priorities. Totally kidding, of course. Bronx or Bust!

Viva Orlando

Last week I had a little gettaway to Orlando to spend some time with my family. Dave and Dan had endodontics meetings down in Orlando and Dave took his kids a few days early to go to Disneyworld. Because Becky is pregnant with her 6th and is still in the sick stage, they gave me this proposal: I come down and help with the kids while Dave is at meetings and they'll pay for all the park tickets and food and everything. DEAL! It was a pretty easy decision and I'm so glad I did it. Before I got there they went to 2 Disney parks and then when I got there we went to a waterslide park and to Sea World. The kids were adorable and the weather was perfect: 85 degrees and sunny, I loved it. Another thing that made it great was that I accidentally forgot my cell phone! I realized it when I got to the airport but it was actually nice to not be able to get ahold of, it was a true vacation! I've decided I need to wean myself off my phone a little bit: yes its not quite as convenient but things still work. Dave picked me up curbside at the airport (it was great, I only had to wait a few minutes) and we were laughing about what it was like in the pre-cell phone days, you just kept driving around the loop at the airport until you saw your person on the curb...sometimes it was 5 minutes, sometimes like 30. Or you could also send someone in to the baggage claim area to find who you're waiting for, then go out to the curb. Anyways, here are some pictures for your enjoyment!