Flashback Friday: Ragnar Insanity Edition

One of the coolest things my much smaller waist and I have ever done is run a 200-mile, 36-hour relay from Madison to Chicago with 12 eventually-sweaty-and-oh-so-stinky friends and got-to-know-each-other-extremely-well-extremely-fast strangers. We made our non-stop journey through blazing sun and pitch-black night with two vans, one wrist-slap baton, reflective vests and headlamps for the pitch-blackness-on-lonely-rural-roadsness of night, plenty of pluck and determination and encouragement and Gatorade, and a huge collective sense of adventure. It was both awful and awesome, and if any of you run another Ragnar race and need a slow old man for your team, I'd be very interested in doing it again.

Flashback Friday: Passing the Baton Edition

Seven years ago, I ran a 200-mile, 36-hour baton relay with 12 people, two vans, three pair of shoes, one shower in a high school at the halfway point, fitful sleep, and a big glorious mix of challenge and determination and pain and euphoria and friendship and encouragement and accomplishment and unbridled joy. 

And I both totally and never want to do it again.