The Atlanta venue for this race was the Georgia International Horse Park, which was the venue for mountain biking at the 1996 Olympic games. There are miles of trails - mountain bike and equestrian - here and it was actually where I ran my first Dirty Spokes race after I moved to Atlanta.
// The Course //
Before I get into the recap, here's a quick rundown of how Ragnar Trail works. There are three loops - green, yellow, and red - and a team of eight (or four for you ultra folks) run relay style, alternating loops until each member of the team has run each loop. The fastest team to complete the 24 laps (3 loops x 8 people) or roughly 120 miles wins. The loops break down as you would imagine, green being the easiest, yellow the intermediate and red the most difficult. As the safety video I watched before the race started, the loops are graded on relative difficulty so that's not always the case. For example, I thought the yellow loop was harder than the red, but I can see why they choose to label them that way.
Each loop started and ended in the transition zone. A tented area in the middle of Ragnar Village - the epicenter of the weekend's event. From transition, you ran into a large open field and followed the signs to whichever loop you were assigned to run. All three loops finished with the same final "quarter mile" - it was much longer than a quarter. You ran through a timing mat that registered the team's chip and bib which would then come up on a monitor in the transition area (that's how you knew it was time to get in their to switch each lap). After crossing that you made a long sweeping left turn, more of a dogleg really, before one final dip into the woods. When you popped out of the woods it was about 100-150 meters to the finish/transition.
Green Loop | 4.5 miles | The green loop was definitely the most beginner friendly of the routes. It began with a few hundred meters in the big open field where you ran alongside campsites, before breaking right onto a long section of double track. The first mile and half or so of this loop was flat and fast. No matter whether you ran this one late at night or on tired legs, the opening was a perfect spot to settle into a nice rhythm and cruise.
Once the trail thinned down to single track things got a little bit trickier but the course was still fairly mellow. There were a handful of switchbacks and some up and down but nothing too crazy. I thought it was fairly similar to the UNG trail by my office. Tricky in a couple spots but overall you were able to move through it fairly quickly. It shared the same last two or so miles with the yellow course but I think the thing that made those sections more difficult was the fact that I ran them both at night. I don't think they would have been as challenging in the daytime. The worst parts were the wooden bridges that had two or three-inch gaps between the boards. That got sketchy on tired legs. I wouldn't be surprised if a few people caught their toes and took falls.
Yellow Loop | 5.4 miles | The yellow loop was the quickest to dispatch with the pleasantries of the open grass field and double track. After a short stretch of both, you quickly dipped into the single track for a roller coaster course of ups and downs, switchbacks, rocks, roots, and more of those nasty little wooden bridges. No matter when you ran this loop it was tricky. It was a mountain bike trail through and through so that made it difficult to really settle in. The fact that it shared a couple of miles with the green loop helped with one or the other. I ran yellow first so, it was super helpful to have already seen that section.
Red Loop | 5.5 miles | While it was labeled the most difficult, this was my favorite loop. It might be because it was my only daylight loop, but I felt like it would have suited me best either way. The loop started with a long stretch in the grass field. You ran past a bunch of campsites, which was fun, then you dropped down a short hill and into a tunnel that took you underneath the access road. It was pitch black in there even in the daylight. It must have been really cool looking at night with headlamps zipping in and out.
Coming out of the tunnel you realized why they marked it most difficult as a long climb greeted you. About halfway up this climb, the surface switched from grass to exposed granite. Once things leveled off at the top of the climb things switched between short sections of trail and exposed granite slabs. The trail was pretty well worn into granite, so it was actually fairly easy to pick a line. I don't know if that's normal or if it was just because it was run so many times over the two days of the race, but it was very helpful to me on my final leg.
The trail dropped down off the backside of the granite hill and turned into a soft, wood-chip surface that worked its way along the shore of a pond/bog/swamp thing. You gradually began climbing back up with mostly longer gentler grades before being hit hard by two steep, rutted double track ascents. The elevation gain wasn't insane, but it was noticeably more than the other two loops. On top of the hill once again, you worked your way through similar sections of granite outcroppings and short trails again before dropping back down to the tunnel.
Coming out of the tunnel, you hit the short ramp of an uphill and then had a long stretch of field/dirt road - with one more little grinder of a hill left - before looping around to the quarter mile to go timing mat.
// The Race //
The race started on Friday with teams setting off as early as 9 am and as late as 6 pm. We started at 3 but since I was the anchor leg, I wasn't scheduled to run my first leg until 7 or 8. I ended up getting to the race around 4 and spent about an hour and a half getting checked in and set up. I brought way too much stuff by the way. Way too much. I don't think I used a quarter of what I brought, but at least I was prepared.
By the time I got squared away we were a few legs into the race but I took some time to meet all of my teammates and get a quick scouting report from a few people around that had already run the yellow loop. We ended up being a little bit behind the schedule that Allen had predicted for us, so I didn't start until after 8. I was hoping to get started before sunset but ended up starting just after dusk but before it was full on dark. That made things a little tricky because the headlamp wasn't quite as effective as it would be later. I got a short warm-up in before heading to the transition area where I milled around until I saw Night Train come up on the monitors. I took the belt/number from Allen Bray - the guy that invited me to join the team, our captain, and seventh runner - and set out on my first leg.
I got out a little quicker than I probably should have, but all of the waiting around made me a little anxious and it was hard to keep my adrenaline in check early on. I spent a lot of the loop passing people, which made Allen's explanation of our team name make a lot of sense. With the light from my headlamp, I really did look like a train barreling down the tracks. I had a really difficult time settling into the first leg. I never felt like I was comfortable or in a groove. It felt like I was fighting it the whole way. I'm not sure if it was the waiting around or racing at an odd time, or the heat but something just felt off.
Despite feeling uneven the whole time, I actually ended up running solid. I think it was a touch longer than the advertised 5.4 miles - I'm calling it six - so that messed with me a little bit as It ended up being a few minutes more effort than I was thinking. Once I finally hit the timing mat, I felt like I brought it home fairly strong but man was I glad to get that first leg over with. I handed off to Errol - our first runner - just inside of 40 minutes.
After finishing the yellow loop, I jogged a short cooldown, just to try and settle down a little and bring my heart rate down. I was worried about everything locking up on the third leg if I kept running hard and then just stopping, so I tried to at least jog a mile after each leg. Once I cooled down a little and changed, I made my way to the mess tent to grab something to eat. I wasn't going to do that initially, but I figured I had at least six hours between runs, so I should try and get something solid in my stomach instead of relying on Clif Bars and Pop Tarts from the jump. Fueling was definitely something I was worried about going into this whole adventure. I haven't done anything that's lasted this long or had this much downtime in between efforts, so I was really nervous about my stomach rebelling against me. I wouldn't say I nailed it, as there were plenty of trips to the Port-Os, my stomach never really bothered me on any of the loops.
Once I had eaten a little, I decided to settle into my tent and try to get some sleep before my next leg. I set an alarm for 12:30 am, thinking I'd run around 1:30. Finding sleep was a little tough since our camp was right near the finish line and people were really festive pretty late into the night. I finally felt like I was drifting around the time my alarm went off, because of course. When I finally rustled myself out to of the tent and started moving around a little bit I found out that we were running about an hour behind Allen's predicted times. That wasn't a huge issue because we were recording everyone's in and out time, so we had a pretty good idea of how long everyone would be out on the trail.
I ended up starting the Green Loop around 2:45 am, which was a trip. My body was all sorts of confused, but like I said above, this loop had a great start. I really felt like I was rolling on the gravel double track. I felt about a million times better and that went a long way for my confidence. Even when we got off of the double track and on to the proper trails I was feeling strong and smooth. There were a couple times where I thought maybe I should have sprung for a more powerful headlamp but that seemed to coincide with the times I passed people that had like 800 lumens, 200 dollar lamps on so probably not a good comparison.
The wooden bridges were definitely a little sketchy on tired legs. I decided to take them a little easier and make sure that I didn't catch a toe and take a tumble. Because I felt better on this loop, I felt like I was able to enjoy it a little bit more than the yellow loop. I really had fun on the section of this loop that featured a soft pine needle surface and twisting trails. It was super peaceful as I was in a little bit of a no-man's land situation for a few minutes. I could only hear my feet, my breathing and whatever was scurrying around in the woods.
I was snapped out of that little trance when we popped out on a section of trail along the entrance road and ran right under the street lights. Shortly after that, I crossed the timing mat and drove home for the finish.
I finished the green loop around 29:30, which I was much, much happier about than how I ran the first leg. I handed off to Errol, we started our final rotation through the lineup, and then I made my way back to our camp to get something to eat and figure out a plan for the final leg. I did another quick cool down to try to keep my legs from locking up and then made the decision to try and lay down in my tent for a little bit. I finished around 3:15 a.m. and figured I wouldn't run again until 8 at the earliest so I laid down and actually ended up catching a little bit of sleep.
After a few hours, I got out of the tent and started to mill around camp a little bit. It was probably around 6 or 6:30 a.m., so I was very excited to see that we had multiple pots of coffee going since coffee and maple syrup where pretty much what my body was running on at that point. I took my sweet time getting loose for the final lap and spent some more time talking with other people who had already run the red loop to get some intel on what was coming up. There were a few people on my team that said they thought I was going to crush the red loop since I was running it in the daylight. I wasn't sure since I already had 10+ miles on my legs, but I was looking forward to bringing it home.
Similar to the green loop, the red loop started out firmly planted in my wheelhouse. The long lead-in in the big open grass field allowed me to get into a rhythm early. I was excited to be running in the daylight finally and set my sights on passing as many people as possible over the course of the 5.5 miles of the trail ahead. This loop definitely had the most sustained climbs but save one rutted double track section that was steep AF. The loop was kind of a lolly-pop shape which climbed then descended then climbed back up before coming full circle. Once I pulled my way back up to the top of the exposed granite hilltop, I set out to bring the race home for Night Train.
I let gravity do some of the work on the way back down to the tunnel and then once I got into the big open field for the final kilometer I really tried to pour it on. I could see a bunch of runners ahead of me and just tried to reel in as many as I could. After the long stretch othe f grass field at the end of this loop, I was not excited to see the final little section of trail. My legs really didn't like that change up so close to the finish. Fortunately, it wasn't a very long section and before I realized it I was onto the final stretch.
This was the coolest part of the whole experience. When I got into the finishing corral, the entire team was there waiting for me and we all ran across the finish line together. That was what I did this race for. It was really fun to be part of a team like that. Everyone put in so much effort and it was really cool to all cross the line together.
I was 37:12 on my watch, which was pretty much right on what Allen had predicted. He took the 10k pace that we submitted and added 5% for the trails and then an additional 5% for each loop to account for fatigue. It's not super scientific but I think his overall prediction was pretty close to our team finish time. After finishing our final leg we checked in to see where we ranked. We were the first team in the open division to finish, so at around 9:45 we had the lead but we had to wait to see if any of the teams that started after us finished in the next couple of hours.
We ended up finishing in 18:39:32 and went on to win by about 14 minutes (18:53:44). The top three teams were all under 19 hours and four of the top five teams were in the open category (3rd place was a masters team).
My official times were - Yellow - 39:55 | Green - 29:58 | Red - 37:17
Talking to Allen a few weeks later he told me that he had dumped all of the results data into excel and did some sorting and calculating. It turns out I had the fastest total time and ran the fastest on each loop. I'll admit, I thought that I was capable of that, if I ran well, but i didn't really know what to expect because there are so many people running. I was pretty excited when I heard that though. It was a nice little boost. Also, apparently we get belt buckles for winning, which is pretty sweet. We are trying to get a little team party together to celebrate and hand them out.
// Recovery Beer of the Week //
Curious Traveler - Pineapple Shandy
I am an unapologetic shandy guy. Say whatever you want. I don't care. I thoroughly enjoy them. Usual,ly I stick with the lemonade variety but since it's starting to warm up here in Georgia, Amanda and I decided to give this pineapple version a shot. It was pretty good. A little sweet and very easy to drink. They didn't last long in the refrigerator. We'll have to remember to pick up some more when the mercury really starts to rise as the spring goes on.
// Closing Thoughts //
As cool as the camp spork medals are, I'm pretty stoked for the belt buckle. It was really cool to win this event. Allen told me he thought we would have a shot based on what he figured everyone was capable of doing but, to be honest, I wasn't really super worried about the results. I wanted to run well personally and to help the team but I wasn't going to obsess over times or stress out if we fell off the pace. This race/event was about the adventure. I wanted to do something a little different and yeah sure when I was out there on course I was just racing like any other race, but the atmosphere was different and it was definitely different trying to figure out how to eat and sleep and then try to race again and again. I really enjoyed getting a chance to meet some new people and bond over super early morning coffee and the different routes. It was also really cool to see so many people at this event. There were 182 teams that finished in the regular category and another 19 in the ultra category. That's more than 1,500 runners in total. Awesome.
This is definitely something that I would like to do again. Hopefully, we can keep the team together for next year. Maybe someday I'll think about entering the Ultra division if I can get Ferenc and some others to come down. For now, though, I'm stoked to be a member of team Night Train - the defending champs. I have a million race t-shirts, but this one gets added to the wear with pride category for sure.
Admittedly, this is super late but I'm glad to finally get it posted. I'm cutting myself a little slack because the next weekend we went to Tuck Fest and I made a vlog about Ragnar, so that took up some time. You can check out the vlog on my youtube channel or in the blog below. Hopefully, I'll have a Tuck Fest vlog and a catch up blog coming up soon.
