I began my road trip to Zion Ponderosa Ranch Resort on Thursday, May 10, at 4:00 am. I spent a few hours Wednesday packing and getting ready then woke up early - after going to bed real, real, real late - Thursday morning to finish packing and loading my car. I stopped by the Starbucks on Rosecrans/Isis, visited my PO Box, then hopped on the freeway by 4:15 destined for Utah.
I stopped in Barstow, California around 6:07 AM to get a picture of the Sunrise.
I stopped at The Mad Greek Cafe in Baker for breakfast around 7:30 am.
It was a very delicious breakfast!
I made it to Vegas by 9:30 but I did not want to stop. I wanted to get to Zion as soon as possible so that I could set up camp and meet my teammates before sundown. I picked up gas in North Las Vegas and made it to St. George, Utah, by 1:00 PM where I stopped at Starbucks to refill my coffee. I made another stop in Hurricane, Utah around 1:30 for groceries and made it to Zion Ponderosa Ranch by 3:45 pm. There was limited cell service in Zion so I wasn't able to send or receive phone calls or txt messages. The last message I got was that 4 of my teammates would be carpooling and arriving around 4. I ran into a former teammate, Stacy, who was volunteering at the entrance to the campground. We were on the same team for Ragnar Trail Tahoe in 2016. I ended up hanging out with her for a while. She offered me a place to camp at her site with her team so I took her up on her offer and set up camp. I wasn't really worried about meeting my team that evening. I figured I would eventually meet up with them at some point before our start time.
I walked up to Ragnar Village taking pictures along the way. I ran into my team captain, Jimmie Blevins, volunteering in Ragnar Village. I headed back to my campsite with plans on returning to the village when his shift ended at 10. I was pretty tired by that point and when I laid down in my tent I did not feel like getting back up but I went to the village at 10 anyway. He wasn't there and the station he was volunteering at was closed. I went back to my tent and went to sleep for the evening.
The following morning I went over to see my team captain at his campsite. Him and his wife Emilie brought their "Burro" trailer with them and parked it at their campsite. Mari and Steve from Salt Lake City were there as well. Melissa from Oregon was there (Jimmie and Emilie were from Portland, Oregon, and drove down to pick up Mari and Steve on the way to Zion). Melissa was our first runner. We were down one runner when Jennifer's sister had to back out days before the event. Jennifer hadn't shown up yet but she was there and had txt messaged us and was looking for us (cell service was spotty and I would receive alerts at random locations in the area).
We managed to locate Jennifer somewhere in the village and had a team picture taken before the start.
I was runner #6 which means I get to run the red loop first. I believe the red loop is a 7.7 mile loop. My fit app on my phone recorded me running for 1 hour 25 minutes (I don't keep track of my time because many times I forget to start the clock when I begin my run and/or stop the clock at the end of my run).
These are pictures from my first red loop run. I felt strong and really enjoyed the run. I ran a little harder than usual but made sure not to run too hard with knowledge that I still had to run the yellow and green loops. I didn't walk any of this loop even though there were some very steep parts, I just ran really slow. The last 3 miles of the loop were relatively flat and I ran somewhat hard for the majority of this section with 2 ladies on a single track road. Once the road opened up into a wide fire road I was able to slow down my pace and let the ladies continue ahead of me. I was very happy with my time!
