A week after racing Tri Santa Cruz, I was back up in Tahoe to run the Ragnar trail relay with a bunch of co-workers. This year they moved the race to August from July, which meant all the trails were snow free. Instead of a flatter simpler course from the year before though, we were climbing up two peaks on the yellow and red loops making for a much more challenging, though satisfying race.

On this race, I started as the first runner which was a blast.  That meant I started and finished early, but the honest reality was that I was still just as tired as when I started near the end. The green loop was my first loop and we started with all the fast teams. I was able to keep everyone in my rear view mirror except the LAPD - or more accurately the team of runners who all work for the LAPD. I chased their runner for 2 miles before finally giving up and realized that I had over-done the green loop.

With already sore legs, I picked up my next run 8 hours later around 8:30pm on the red loop. The red loop went up the east side of Sugar Bowl and was supposed to be the hardest. The beginning overlapped with the green, but then about 2 miles in we turned off and climbed up 1k feet to the top. The climbing was tough and was a borderline at the scramble at the top where I passed many including someone who had passed me on the flat. The run back down though was clean and easy, though I was passed back by someone who climbed past me. My downhill running is just not as great as others, but maybe I just value my knees too much.

After a nap, I was up again at 4am for my last run, the Yellow run. The Yellow led up the east side of sugar bowl and then traversed the ridge over to mt Lincoln before a decent back to the campground.  My legs were already pretty toasted, so I gave up a few minutes to if I had green legs. The route was also pretty technical causing some slow downs to just keep traction on the trail.   The views were spectacular though, and the sunrise was glorious!

One more nap and then we welcomed in our last runners later that morning. We were a fast crew getting 4th overall. Hard to know if they’ll keep running the Tahoe Trail as their numbers keep dropping year-over-year, but hopefully now that the course is back to its original glory more folks will come out again.