Ragnar Relay NW Passage: The Start

Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies - Reporting for Duty!

We had a 7am start this year, half hour earlier than last year. Beautiful Pacific NW summer morning....clear skies, nice sunrise and put all that against a backdrop of crazy runners and you have an absolutely perfect day. We were required to be there an hour ahead of our start time in order to check in and have our 'Safety Briefing'. Ragnar requires everyone in the van have a reflective safety vest and each van must have two headlamps and two blinking tail lights. They actually verify this when you check in and get your van packet, in addition to going over all the safety rules for the entire relay. 

Van 1: I.D.10.T, Bad JuJu, Crazy Lady, Obama Money,

#meanjess, Moi, and The Durfster, AKA van driver extraordinaire, 

AKA 'plus one' of #meanjess
Photo Credit: Bad JuJu

Van 2 could have slept in since they weren't required to be anywhere until their check-in and safety briefing at the first major exchange. But they were nice enough to get up and head over to the start to see us off and get some group pics.

Ran into a fierce Viking....think he belongs to the #fastattacks, 

but it's possible they just found him on the side of the road. 

Once we handled our business, we got some great shots, cheered on other teams starting and just hung out until it was our wave start. #meanjess kicked things off this as illustrious Runner 1. She had big shoes to fill (*cough*aaron*) but didn't let us down. 

200 miles? No problem - we got this.