The second weekend of the year has become somewhat predictable for these past four New Years. Wency Ortega is going to run. And if the pattern holds up, more and more people are going to run with him, particularly Javier Cuevas and Roly Diaz who have joined the aforementioned Wency (that’s I for newbies here… after all “That’s me” is grammatically incorrect) each of theses last three years. For the second year in a row now, it hasn’t been just any race, though. It has been the Ragnar Relay. You know the one if you read my blogs last January – the one from Miami to Key West. And this time around we brought a new bunch of looneys with us to join the three that had joined “The Three Amigos” last year in Van 1.
This year was a lot less stressful than last year, particularly when it came to putting the team together. Last year it was an utter nightmare to find 12 runners, and as many of you who may have read the account of last year’s race, we didn’t even wind up with 12. We settled for 10. And for of those 10 were not people we would have asked to run with us if it weren’t for “desperate times sometimes lead to desperate measures”. We got our team, we ran our race and we enjoyed it thoroughly, but it never really felt like ONE TEAM. This year was going to be different, if it killed us. We searched we found and we created a team with more than enough time to spare. Come June we were ready to go with our team fully registered and ready to go.
Our team had a pretty interesting make-up: 6 repeat offenders (Javier Cuevas, Javi Mariscal, Roly Diaz, Chicky and Nicole Rodriguez, and myself) and 6 newbies (Erica Fratz, Pep Varela, Will and Mike Trueba, Cory Culver, and Crissy Rodriguez). The relationships existing among the group is what made it rather interesting though. The group consisted of the following: A father, daughter combo (Chicky and Nicole); Siblings (Will and Mike); Cousins (Crissy and I); neighbors (Roly and Cory); Teacher/student (Javier and Erica); High school classmates (Roly and Pep); Puerto Ricans (Roly and Crissy); a pair who’d never lived in Miami (Cory and Erica); and Javi.
There were some other interesting facts with regards to the runners: There were 9 male runners, all married, all but one over 40 (Mike is 35), and all but one having at least three kids (Cory has 2), to go along with 3 female runners, none ever married, two under the age of 25 (Crissy is 38). And the professions represented a variety of areas of expertise: from a lawyer, and a student in law school, to a couple of engineers, one of which works for Ford designing car engines, to a Phd in psychology, to a soon to be full professor at a University, to a Sales Manager of one of the biggest Apple stores in the world, to a software designer with his own business, to a high school Calculus teacher, to a student doing medical research, to an air traffic controller. Oh yeah, and we also had a Navy Commander, helicopters division, in our ranks.
And the experience running in our team ran the gamut also. Our runners included one who outside of Ragnar has never run more than a 5k (Javi M.). Another runner maxed out at 10 miles (Cory). A number of others had done half marathons (Will, Pep, Chicky). There were a few who had done a marathon (Nicole, Erica, and Roly, soon to be joined by Pep this year), and another trio who had done multiple marathons (Mike, Javier C. and myself). And did I mention we had an IronMan (or shall I say, an IronWoman) in our midst (Crissy)?
Yes, we had an interesting crew running. And what was going to be real interesting was to see how the van assignments would play out because we wanted to accommodate everyone so that they could wind up with someone they knew, AND running legs they could handle. That was going to be the hard part (That’s what she said!… more on this later).
I sent out requests for everyone to choose their leg lengths as soon as we had a whole team. Right away they came back. Right away I realized that the majority of the runners all wanted THE SAME LEGS. And that the ones who chose different legs were not coinciding in the same bus as their travel partners. I wanted to accommodate everybody in every way possible but it was going to be difficult based on the requests. So I began creating the vans. Van 1 would consist of Javier C, Javi M., Will, Mike, Erica and Roly. Van 2 was going to have Nicole, Chicky, Pep, Crissy, Cory, and myself. Almost everybody fell in a good place, but I did have a couple of issues. Javi had requested since the end of last year’s race to run THE SAME legs this year so he could conquer them properly (I think that meant without getting lost… or maybe he was simply planning on training this year. It’s a tossup actually). I was not going to deny him that. But that meant that Roly, who specifically asked for leg 6 wouldn’t be paired up with either one of his invites, his neighbor Cory, and his classmate Pep. The problem with this was that nobody in van 2 knew these guys, nor did they know each other. In the end we knew we’d all have a great time anyways, but it’s nice to go into an adventure with ONE person you already know, and these two guys were going to go in blind. But it was the best I could do based on requests.
Something always happens though to rectify things. Last year a runner dropped that allowed me to run with my friends. This year, something less drastic happened: Ragnar decided to change the lengths of the legs. One change in particular was all that needed to happen. But let me backtrack just a bit. Before the change on the website, we had a team meeting at Javi’s house where we all met, including the out-of-towners who Skyped in. It was a very nice and productive meeting where we got to know almost everybody’s faces and/or voices and where all the logistics fell into place. Everybody got their van assignments and was cool with what he/she was given. Only one thing was left to figure out: two runners offered their vans… unfortunately they were both running in the same van. Something would have to happen to fix things.
Then: THE CHANGE. All the legs were going to be changed somewhat, but one in particular was glaring. Javi’s legs which were almost identical to the previous year’s were going to be longer. His last one, though was going to be significantly longer… and over the 7-mile bridge in the Keys, and area where we would not be able to help him as he ran. this was all Javi needed to know that he was no longer going to be doing leg 2. This was the opening I saw to move him to van 2 and fix the little things that needed to be fixed. Javi in van 2 meant that we would have a van to ride in as opposed to seeing van 1 with TWO vans. It also meant that I could send Cory to van 1 with Roly. AND Pep knew Javi so he wouldn’t be without someone he knew. Amazing how things always seem to work out, huh? We were set!
As we got closer to the race, we had another organizational meeting to tie some loose ends. It was then that we realized that as long as Roly was on our team, we’d be fine. He had the race bible memorized already and he was going to keep us on track. That day we decided to have a dinner and Chicky’s house and Nicole said she would cook for us. We were going to be able to all meet face to face the night before the race and carb up “REAL GOOD”. All was good. This was soooooo not last year going into the race.
This leaves me with but one thing to discuss before we get to the race: our team name. Last year we had a bunch of ideas for what our name was going to be, only to be told what it was. This year we got to all have a say. In the end, we agreed on a name that Roly (who else) came up with. ”We’re Number One”. That alone would be a bit cocky and would probably rub people the wrong way, though. That’s OK because Roly had more in mind… “…Pull My Finger”. Now we had a name! Oh and Roly had thought this thing out completely too. Along with the name, he had already designed a t-shirt with a “We’re Number 1″ finger in front, finger pointing to the sky, then with a finger pointing out asking all those behind us to “Pull Our Finger”. Classic! Throw in his idea to get actual foam fingers stating that We Are Number One, to wear during the race, and we were set to go. We had a name, we had a theme, we had a “costume” (sort of…). Roly went ahead and ordered the tees and the fingers and had them mailed to me to distribute the day before the race. This thing was so on! Now all we had to do was wait for January 5th to come around for our pasta dinner!
Get ready for Part II… Dinner and Race Prep