For the 2011 Tennessee Ragnar Relay, Brian and I put together a team of total strangers from the web for 200 miles of overnight relay running.  Anything could have happened, but in actuality it couldn’t have gone much better. Brian was a little hopeful that one of the team members would not show up so he could be a runner instead of a driver/captain. But everyone came. We had a dedicated driver in Van 1 whose wife was in that van, and Brian drove Van 2 while I was his navigator/sidekick.

I was a little concerned about drama in the vans. We had some friends in a stressed out van one time and they did not have nearly as much as we did on the race. But everyone got along and even became friends, signing up for future races together. They taught each other how to Tweet, shared secrets about pre-race meals, and celebrated each others Road Kills on the side of the van. There may have been a vinyl-cling skeleton whose member got longer – like Pinocchio’s nose – only skeletons don’t have noses if you know what I mean.

The only bad part was when my sleeping bag went missing and I was frozen when trying to sleep. But since we only had about 3 hours to sleep, it wasn’t that big of a deal. The foliage was gorgeous, the finish line was a great area, and the rolling hills were a nice change from Florida (because I did not have to run them.)

Here’s how it all turned out in video form:

If you like that video even a little, please, please, please vote for it by clicking HERE. Scroll BELOW the sign up form (you don’t need to fill it out) and click the little “vote” square underneath our video labeled by “by Brian”. We’ve got a solid hold on second place, but we need the win for a free entry into next year’s TN Relay worth $1200. Do it now. Pretty please.

I’m so excited that this relay went so well, and the feedback was word for word what we had hoped for.

“All I had to do was show up and run.”

“It was so nice not to have to think about where to be – when, and just let you handle the logistics.”

“You really thought of everything and it was great having an experienced team captain.”

I could not have written better lines for our runners to say! And they liked our Drink Chia too! (Chia is totally the way to go to hydrate, avoid colds, and keep from getting those post-running headaches.)

Our Florida Keys Ragnar Relay team is full, but we’re headed to Arizona for the Del Sol Ragnar Relay in February and we’ve still got a few spots left on that team, so sign up soon if you’re interested. And we just announced that we’ll be putting together a team for Cape Cod in May, so you can gather friends and get in on the ground floor for that one.