The Generosity of Strangers

When I decided to run all 13 Ragnar Relays starting with the original race – Wasatch Back – I didn’t worry about finding 13 teams.
Well, okay, I worried about the team I co-captain in Wasatch Back, but if you’ve run a Ragnar Relay you understand why that was the last part of the logistics with which I was concerned. Running in these races is like going to a family reunion. You may not know everyone’s names, but you know they love you. (And sometimes you wish you’d gotten their running genes!)
Not only did a number of awesome teams offer to add me to their roster (most without asking my pace), but a Utah team is letting me hitch a ride to Washington State. Now it’s one thing to let strangers in your van for 24 hours while you run. That is much of the fun of the relays. But Sabrina Peterson and her team have offered to let me ride with them AND “camp out” with them in Boise.
Peterson also shared her “running story” with me. The mother of three young children didn’t grow up playing sports.
“I’m not very coordinated,” she said laughing. But her step-brother talked her into going out for the track team after he didn’t make the soccer team.
“Since then I’ve been pretty inconsistent,” she said. After her second child, about five years ago, her brother-in-law convinced her to sign up for the Top of Utah Marathon (coming up in September if you’re looking for a beautiful run!).
She ran the Wasatch Back and Las Vegas and decided she loved the team aspect of the running events so much, she put in an application to the grand daddy of these races – Hood to Coast. She didn’t get in and decided, “Washington isn’t that much farther than Vegas.”
Running the relays allows her to enjoy the social community of running that is sometimes hard to find in training.
“It’s fun to be with other people,” she said, “and still go out and do the running…I like running a lot. It’s hard to find someone to run with who is your exact same pace…I like how the races brings group fun to running.”
Hitting the road almost always makes life’s problems more manageable.
“The kids are yelling, I have work piling up and I think ‘I don’t have time to run’,” she said. “But then I go run, and all of that stuff doesn’t seem so big anymore.”
My road trip begins this afternoon with Peterson and company – which includes three people who are new to running.
This one is my first out-of-state Ragnar, and I am looking forward to seeing a part of the country I haven’t seen. I will blog about the people I meet more than what I see, but I will post pictures. And of course I will pick on my team, the Steel Gumbies, captained by Ernie Neumann.
I can’t wait to experience that Ragnar community, the runs that start up near the Canadian border and end in Langley, Washington. Hundreds of miles in the company of strangers who don’t mind if I’m slow and I stink. What could be more fun?