Because There's More to Life Then Being Really Really Ridiculously Good Looking

This past weekend I had the chance to volunteer at a 200 mile run relay race called Ragnar.

Ragnar is a relay race done all over the country. This particular race was held from Cumberland Maryland, to National Harbor, DC. Me, Jen, and Seth Klein volunteered for our friends who were running in the race.

Quick rundown of Ragnar- teams of 12 people taking turns running over a 24+ hour time period to reach the finish line 200 miles away. Intense yes? A lot of our close friends signed up together and have been training since spring to accomplish this task. 284 teams participated. Our friend's team name was "Blue Steel Projekt."

First off, we got the BEST volunteer position in my opinion. It's a position that if I were in any other, I would look at and wish I was doing. We got to welcome the runners across this finish line and hand out medals/water!

Man, that was an awesome role to play. A first hand look at the faces of accomplishment. It inspired me to want to do it SO bad. (I haven't ruled it out yet)

Sadly, our shift did not last until our friends crossed. But we did get to talk to them and hang out a bit before they did "officially cross" the finish line. Teams are in a back stage sort of area shortly before the finish line waiting for the last runner to finish their leg. Back there I saw some interesting things..

1. One team carried one of their injured runners across with them. I don't know if she ran and got injured on the run or what, but I thought that was pretty cool.

2. Some teams just didn't care at all when they crossed the finish line. I mean, I get having no feeling after a 24+ hour run with "sleep" stops scheduled in- but why would you not celebrate? How could you not be moved to express some sort of celebratory emotion? Is this just another event in their running career? If I am on a team- that's mandatory. We aren't crossing (no matter how tired we are, or how much our relationships were destroyed in the process...hehe) without passionate screaming, waving, and giving sweaty hugs to strangers.

On the contrary- Blue Steel Projekt

 I got to talk to them before they crossed and heard amazing stories of accomplishment, craziness, and inspiration. awesome to hear how God worked through their entire process. I wish I got a photo of kruz's (barefoot guy) "speed suit" beforehand....epic.

It reminded a lesson Nova taught me along time ago. Runners are crazy. Not just the type of people who say out there things every once in a while crazy, no, a special kind of crazy that involves stories that belong in books and on blogs crazy.

Between starting this blog and finishing it I agreed to run a 5k for Breast Cancer October 15th...No 200 miles BUT- still excited. It will be my first official run.

Edit: This pretty much rounds up my point of runners entirely...(courtesy of Beth Sweatman!)