@Bobbinyc wrote:how far does each team go? Should be very beautiful there.
Yeah, New Hampshire, especially in September, is quite beautiful. 🙂
Each team goes the full 200+ miles; for a 12-person team, each person does three legs totalling between 12.4 miles and 20.4 miles (depending upon position). For a 6-person "Ultra" team, each person does six legs totalling between 30.8 miles and 38.8 miles.
https://www.runragnar.com/event-detail/relay/reachthebeach
Here's a shot I took a couple of years ago during event:
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@CallieFitbit wrote:
@DerrickS did it last year and is training (ahemmm) for it again this year!
@CallieM Gesundheit. 
@shipo I'm doing the the Napa Valley Ragnar race for the 2nd time this year. Last year we had one person on our team drop out last minute so everybody had to run a little extra, but I ended up running 23.02 miles over three legs.
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@DerrickFitbit wrote:
@CallieFitbit wrote:@DerrickS did it last year and is training (ahemmm) for it again this year!
@CallieM Gesundheit.
@shipo I'm doing the the Napa Valley Ragnar race for the 2nd time this year. Last year we had one person on our team drop out last minute so everybody had to run a little extra, but I ended up running 23.02 miles over three legs.
When's the Napa Valley race?
Yeah, four legs is just about perfect (for non-Ultra teams that is); two years ago we had a two folks drop and one new runner come in at the last minute to do two legs meaning four of us had to do four (fortunately we entered as a Freestyle team). I ended up with the following legs (total: 28.9 miles):
- 01 - 8.1 miles
- 06 - 8.6 miles
- 16 - 6.5 miles (with two 11% grade climbs totalling 800')
- 28 - 5.7 miles
All in all, I still prefer the 6-person Ultra teams; crack off a run every four to six hours, eat, sleep, drive, cheer, repeat. 🙂
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@DerrickFitbit wrote:
@CallieFitbit wrote:@DerrickS did it last year and is training (ahemmm) for it again this year!
@CallieM Gesundheit.
@shipo I'm doing the the Napa Valley Ragnar race for the 2nd time this year. Last year we had one person on our team drop out last minute so everybody had to run a little extra, but I ended up running 23.02 miles over three legs.
Hey Derrick, when is the Napa Valley event? I'm probably going to be out there in a few weeks. 🙂
I've run the Reach to Beach relay the last three years and did 6-Legs/33-miles (6-person team), 4-Legs/29-miles (11-person team), and 3-Legs/18-miles (12-person team), and this year I'm slated for 3-Legs/19.8-miles. Personally I prefer running with a 6-Person "Ultra" team; it is a lot of running but there is far less boredom, especially when the other van has the baton. 🙂
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@shipo Whooops! I've been caught up in the Help Forums too much and haven't spent that much time in the Discussions forums lately. Sorry for the delayed response.
Napa Valley is November 4 - 5th, which seemed to creep up out of no where.
We had somebody drop out last minute last year too. Luckily I didn't have to pick up an extra leg, but my race legs were the longer ones. Below are my splits for the legs that I ran:
1st leg:
This leg was 9 miles and mostly uphill so I was pretty pleased with my mile splits. You can tell because mile 7 was the steepest part of the climb and mile 8 was all downhill and I was cruising and taking advantage of my long stride (I'm 6'4). In hindsight, I probably should paced instead of raced this leg, I hit some serious walls later on.
2nd Leg:
Even though this leg was almost completely flat, this was hands down the hardest leg for me. It was basically running down a pitch black highway at 11 PM which was very mentally tough. On top of it being very mentally tough, my legs were feeling the steep hills from my 1st leg.
3rd leg:
At this point the only thing that was keeping me going was the thought of eating a huge brunch and making up for the huge caloric deficit that I was in. This leg was also very flat and there were a few times that I almost got lost sometime around mile 3 or 4 since it was still pretty dark at 6:30 AM and I was mentally and physically exhausted.
Best AnswerHey Derrick,
You're going to laugh at my first leg from last year (a leg I requested another brave soul run this year). Basically the start of RTB last year and this year was outside the main lodge of the Bretton Woods ski area, and then wound around for about a half-mile through a group of nice ski chalets, and then out on to a black diamond run called "Range View", and then almost exactly 1-mile straight up the slope (almost exactly 1,000' vertical gain). Once up to the terminus of the gondola the course heads over to a winding service road and heads pretty much straight back down to the start; a total of 2.5 miles. I plotted the course over on MapMyRun.com and had it display the elevation profile with grade percentages and it reported 22% for most of the ski slope. Per my Dashboard view my average "Pace" while heading up the slope was in the 22:00-23:00 per mile range (but getting down to about 26:00 per mile at its slowest).
Leg 1:
The thing about Leg 1 is the severity of the slope; on the way up I tore up my calf muscles, and on the way down I tore up my quads. Long story short, eleven hours later when my turn for Leg 2 came around I could barely stand up much less walk or run. The good news was that leg started with an easy downhill and then a long grinding climb of over two miles. The downhill bits helped loosen me up a bit, and by the time I crested the hill half way through, I had loosened up and while still sore, I was able to hammer out a pretty good pace.
Leg 2:
By the time Leg 3 rolled around I wasn't in any better shape than I was for Leg 2, unfortunately this leg was uphill for the entire distance save a small rolling hill patch in the third mile.
Leg 3:
By the end of the event on Saturday I quite honestly said, "I'm in worse shape now after only 19 miles than I was two years ago when I did 32.8 with the ultra team." That and literally everybody with a "-01" designation on their bib looked crippled from that first hill.
So very glad I'm not doing it this year. 🙂
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@shipo Just finished Ragnar Napa Valley last weekend and as luck would have it, my first two legs were almost the same as the ones that I ran last year.
Leg 1:
What the screenshot doesn't do a good job of showing is that I had 82 floor climbed for Friday, the majority of them coming from this leg. The first 3 miles were pretty flat and steady, so I paced myself knowing that the hills were about to come (this leg was marked as "very hard").
Around mile 4 is where the hills kicked in and you can tell from the split difference that mile 5 was the steepest part of the run. I ended up walking a lot of the really steep hills and tried to take advantage of my long stride since I knew I wasn't going much faster when running and I could conserve way more energy.
The nice thing is that mile 6 switched to downhill, and I was again relying on my long stride and cruised down the hill in a zig zag. I'm 6'4 so when there's a steep decline, it's really easy for me to open my stride up and pass people hard, which is always a good feeling 
Leg 2:
I ran this leg around 11 PM and it was on a dark straight highway which is my worst case scenario for a run. I don't do well on my runs when there isn't any sort of visual aspect or scenery, and the cars on the highway would constantly temporarily blind me with their headlights.
Knowing that this was going to be a tough run, I ran with my phone and played a lot of pump up music through my phone's speaker (which ended up being a lot of metal). I didn't run with headphones because I wanted to stay aware of my surroundings. This leg owned me last year, so I did a lot more mental preparation going into it. I was happy with how this leg turned out for me.
Leg 3:
This was supposed to be my "easy run", but my legs felt like garbage and the sleep deprivation was kicking in. On top of it all, I started to get a calf cramp around mile 2, so I ended up running a slower on this leg than I did with the steep hills on leg 1.
What was nice was that I was the 5th runner in van 1, so I knew that a big breakfast in store almost immediately after I finished. I ended up eating: a big breakfast burrito, a side of bacon, coffee and a celebratory mimosa afterwards; but I easily could have eaten more.
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