The Finish

The finish this year was in a park across the river from the Minneapolis skyline. I left Preston somewhere around 5am and arrived there about an hour later. At that time the sky was clear and the air still. This photo captures the view early Saturday morning.



Setting up both start and finish is a huge undertaking, and Tanner has taken the lead in doing both at all of our events. Since Dominique joined us this summer, she has taken responsibility for handling a lot of the detail. She is pictured here in her black Ragnar shirt in front of race headquarters, after we had set up and before runners arrived. Among other things, Dominique arranged for the beer garden and generally eliminates a lot of worries for the rest of us. Besides Dan, the other full-time member of our team is Corissa, who started early this year as an intern while finishing up at the University of Utah. During the race she works with course managers to make sure all exchanges are set up, and that the course is marked properly. Dan follows up to double check course set up, and to deal with bottlenecks or problems during the race, such as, for example, the rerouting necessitated by the aforementioned gunman.




By midday, the finish area was a hive of activity with bands playing, runners eating, drinking and sampling merchandising, and teams arriving at the finish with increasing frequency. This is a shot of the finish area in full swing.

I started the day announcing teams at the finish. The wind gradually picked up, blowing over a couple of our flag banners. The base of the standards should be filled with water, but whoever set them up forgot to fill two of them. A runner temporarily solved the problem by anchoring the standards with rocks. Dan thought that looked pretty tacky so asked me to find a hose and fill the bases with water. I located the hose draped over a retaining wall near the tent showers. Leaning over to pull up the hose I somehow lost my balance and fell at least four feet to the concrete below where a made a perfect three point landing - left hand, forehead and knee. I got up dazed, seeing stars, and a runner came over and escorted me to the first aid tent. There Pat Yoon, an orthopedic surgeon helping out as a volunteer, examined my finger and dressed cuts on my nose, elbow, hand and knee. I learned a few days later that I broke the little finger of my left hand during the fall. So far as I know, this is the worst injury anyone has suffered in any of our events.
Chalk it up to fatigue and old age.



Given that everyone is pretty hammered by the end of the race, one of our challenges has been to create a celebratory party atmosphere at the finish and have a good turnout at the awards ceremony. Besides the beer garden and bands, we served barbeque at the finish most of the day. A lot of runners stuck around, and we even saw many families, spouses and children, joining runners at the finish. This shot is of the overall winner, the crossTrainers, most of whom ran for Martin Luther College. The wives of two members of the team volunteered at the finish, and kept me entertained all morning.



We give personality awards to teams and volunteers who best capture the spirit of the race, based on the votes of race participants. Here again are the WHORs, winners of the Homecoming Award, which is given to the most popular team. As Dan explained, to win the Homecoming Award, teams should do whatever it was that the high school homecoming queen did to win her title.



Finally, here are the Phoenix Runs and Chicks With Kicks And Guys With _____, the final finishers. These teams arrived an hour or so after the awards ceremony, sometime after all other teams had finished. After being on the course well over 34 hours, I would have expected both teams to be tired, irritable and not altogether happy with us or the world. But here, as we have experienced elsewhere, the last teams in seemed as happy, if not happier, than any other finishers. How to explain this? At the least, these teams pulled together through adversity, and experienced the considerable satisfaction of completing a very tough test of endurance. In distance running, however long it takes, finishing the course is a victory.