Saturday, January 9, 2010

Van 2's First Legs or Do You Wanna Beer?

I have now kicked my first Van 2 runner out of the nest. C-Steve is on his first of three legs. He only has 6.5 miles with medium difficulty. I say medium because that is what Ragnar categorizes his first leg.

Ragnar uses difficulty ratings on each leg. These range from Easy to Very Hard. This is determined by using the length + elevation formula. They do not factor in the human part of the equation. What may be Easy for one may be Very Hard for another. Another one of my responsibilities as the Captain was assigning the legs to my runners. I had to not only look at the total miles but also the difficulty of the legs. Some made my decisions easier. C-Steve wanted the most total miles. I was wanting to be the last runner. I already had van assignments so that narrowed down the leg choices. I had two runners that wanted to only run one time but that did not work. I still pocketed their cash.

What was I thinking. I have a runner on the course. Back to C-Steve. On the Ragnar course there are no water stops like there are on your 5k's and such. The team has to get water to their runners unless they carry their own or have their biker do it for them. The biker. That is a seperate post all together. C-Steve told us to get water to him at about the three mile mark. Gave him a water bottle and he kept on going. He was trying to catch another runner just ahead. We drove to the next exchange so Millionaire could get ready. For some reason he needs a lot of time to get dressed.


C-Steve finished with band-aids still intact. He was excited and was talking a mile a minute.
C-Steve was so excited and ready to run again. He was talking a mile a minute as the saying goes. He was even talking smack to one of the teams that started with us. He almost caught there #7 runner. Game on he says. Atleast I think that is what he said. Remember, C-Steve is from the islands. He already talks fast. At this point he was talking so fast I started bidding on things I did not want to buy.

Ragnar rules state that any runner that starts after 4:30 pm has to wear a reflective vest, headlamp and rear red blinking light until 30 minutes past sunrise. Millionaire was not happy because he was going to have to wear the above for his first run of 6.8 miles. Now Ragnar puts that in the Hard categorie. Not for Millionaire. He breezed through that without any water from his team....per his request. He passed several other teams along the way.

B.o.b. was our #9 runner. Her first run was a Medium 5.1 miles. She was all worked up and nervous. Partly because her run was at night and along a busy, busy stretch of road. Also, I think because she was worried about her pace. Personally I don't think she gives herself enough credit on her running abilities. I have been with her on numerous training runs. She can run. I have been passed by her as well. You can run there B.o.b.b.y. Millionaire's in and now B.o.b. is off.

While B.o.b. was running, we would pull off to the side of the road and yell for encouragement. No water requested. She was running an awesome pace. Smiling all the while. Very busy road and on a Friday night. We stopped more often than we did for our first runners just to keep an eye on her. She also passed some other teams. B.o.b. is in and now time to get....uhmm, Funky?



Now P-Funk-U was tasked with our first Very Hard run. She was going to be running a hilly 8 miles. I would be riding with her on my bike. Again a Ragnar rule. You are allowed a biker during the night hours for safety. PFU is another one of those runners that is better than she thinks. She locks in to a pace and just goes. I have seen her times drop and drop during the year. She had just finished her first marathon a month earlier and gave me no complaints. Well she may have but I don't listen to her that much.

PFU's run started out in to a neighborhood where it was probably best seen at night but not travelled through at night. Not 200 yards in to her run she passes a house where there were 4-5 people standing in the front yard carrying on. A couple of the guys yelled out to her if she wanted a beer. She was polite and said no thank you. It was not like her. I mean not about her not taking the beer but she could have said yes and then given it to me. So I turned around and rode back to the house and yelled out if it was bottles or cans. Now a can would fit perfectly in my bottle cage. A lady yelled they were cans. One of the guys said the beer was not for me it was for the girl that was running. I said I was with her. They laughed and then said a few choice words for me. They were not nice. I said to myself what I say to my kids, "everybody has issues." PFU did have a very hard run. There were some long hills. She locked in on a pace and just kept going. She actually ran up on me a couple of times. I was very proud of her.
There was a guy ahead of us that was not in the race. He was just walking in our same direction while wearing earphones. When I got beside him he jumped so high that he almost fell over. The bad thing is that just when his heart probably started slowing down, PFU passes him. I look back and he just starts walking, real fast, in another direction. Remember that whole van pulling off to the side of the road and yelling encouraging slogans. I wonder if the new driver thought that was only allowed when I was driving. Just saying. We are on the last half mile and I have not seen our van yet. I tell PFU that I am going to ride ahead to the exchange and see if they are there. If not, then I suppose I will now be runner 11. Van 2 was there. How long they had been there is debatable but they were there.
To be continued.......

6 comments:

  1. selfish jerks not wanting to share their beers...

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  2. P-Funk knows nobody listens to her, but do you have to rub it in?

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  3. I still crack up that they wouldn't give you the beer! LOL!

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  4. Walk? Anyone? Walk? - See no one is still listening.

    Wow, Captain! That was a very sweet post!! I don't know what I'm more surprised about - the compliments or that you never once said you want to smack me in the mouth!??!

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  5. Aw thanks Captain. I appreciate the kind words. I also can translate for you the next time you don't know what C Steve is saying.

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  6. Remember - John does this all so he can drink beer - so to not get that beer must have hurt very deep. Lucky he did not pull out his . . . club!

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