A couple months ago, a member of the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers Facebook group posted that they needed a runner to add to their team for the Zion Ragnar Trail Relay. The fee was already paid, just come and run. My family was scheduled to be out of town on the race weekend, so I figured that I had nothing better to do and secured a spot on the team. I hadn’t done a Ragnar before and from what I knew, understood that it wasn’t really my “scene.” Huge corporate sponsorship/product shilling, running in costumes, black eyed pees blasting over speakers, etc…. I am a bit more low key. But a lot of people love it and I think that is great. I especially like that it seems to get people who otherwise may not try running out there. I also see how the group/ team experience could be a lot of fun for friends/family to go out and do something really challenging together. That’s awesome. It just isn’t why I have really come to live running trails. If you go to a non-Ragnar trail race – like an ultra marathon – you will notice a VERY different scene. Less spectacle. Less EDM remixes of “Livin on a Prayer” blasting at a gazillion decibels, less meat-market skin fest.

But I digress. Back to my actual race report. I was the first runner for or team, scheduled to start at 2:00. I arrived, dropped off my gear, drove 5 miles back down the road to the parking lot, took the shuttle back, picked a campsite, set up tent, got dressed and headed over to the big start/finish area. The team captain, Joel, arrived and I pointed out where our spot was about 60 seconds before I took off – just in time. My first leg was the Green Loop – the easiest of the three – 3 miles. I kept an easy pace, quickly relaxing how out of shape my ankle-resting had rendered me.

3 Miles in 31:01 @ 10:22 min/mile with 381 ft. elevation

That left me about 6 hours before I would run again. Much of that was spent trying to keep blowing dust out of my eyes and trying to recharge my phone – which the roaming/searching for signal had quickly drained. I also got to hang a bit with the rest of the team – a super friendly family + friends. They made me feel very welcome. They made what could have been an uncomfortable and awkward weekend I to a very welcoming one. Thanks guys!

At 9:00 I got ready for the Red Loop – the hardest leg, 8+ miles. With my headlamp readying I excitedly took off. This is where I noticed some trouble. It had been dusty all day and there was a little dust that billowed up on my previous loop, but now it was choking. With the 800+ racers that had pounded down the red loop by this point, the dirt was compacted, but rather pulverized into a fine talcum powder-like dust 1-2 inches deep in places. All those feet had also deepened many portions of the trail into a narrow trough/rut with 1-2 inch deep edges on either side to roll ankles on as you tried to tight-rope walk the narrow path. The dust was the real problem though. The constant stream of runner had not only pulverized the trail from dirt into dust, but never left it long enough for it to settle back down. The air was filled with it. My eyes stung and it was hard to breath. Also difficult was the fact that the headlamp light reflected off of it in the air and made it difficult to see though the cloud.

This was frustrating and I couldn’t help but think of the parallel to Donald Worster‘s seminal 1983 study, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Worster’s history examine the 1930s Great Plains environmental and economic disaster know as the Dust Bowl. Employing Marxist theory he outlines how capitalist interests and market created a situation that led to crisis. Capitalism led farmers to overflow the Plains. The region had been enjoying an abnormally wet period, the soil was rich, and yields were astronomic! Huge profits. However, when climate oscillated toward more typical aridity and then devolved into a deep and long drought – the crops died. Where once the millennia-old ecology of long, mixed, and short grass prairie grass weathered regular droughts, there was no longer the deep cover of grasses and interconnected root system. There was only exposed dry soil. And, it all blew away. Worster’s analysis is narrow, and his application of Marxist theory and focus on capitalism doesn’t quite explain the totality of a very complex situation, but revealing and an important work.

I see it as analogous a bit to what happened at the Zion Ragnar. Boasting that this was “the biggest trail Ragnar ever!!!” (Met with lots of cheers) the race organizers sent 2,400+ runners out on the trails. Trails that never see that magnitude of feet in such a compressed time period. And, it destroyed the trails. Dust dust dust. Bigger is better led to deteriorating trail conditions. Later, like in the Dust Bowl, it would lead to disaster. But again, I digress.

I ran my 8.5 miles. The last 3 or so where made much more enjoyable by meeting someone on the trail and chatting about history. It turns out, she had just created a nonprofit organization to so some historic site preservation in the St. George area and we had lots to talk about. Towards the end, my left IT band flared, but I finished the loop.

8.4 miles in 1:42:43 @ 12:15 min/mile and 950 ft. elevation

 From there I went to my tent and tried to get some sleep. At 2:00 it started to rain. Around 4:30 I got up to get ready for my next, and last, leg on the 4.5 mile yellow loop. It would be cold, wet, and certainly muddy, but I was excited. 2 hours later, I was still waiting, soaked to the bone and very cold from standing around. The runner before me texted around 6:30 and said he was dropping. Be had also been waiting 2 hours for the guy before him to finish the red loop. The trail, however, had become un-runnable, he said. This coming from a guy who runs ultras like the Wasatch 100 worried me. I had been watching people come in and hearing that things were bad. The moisture had turned that 1-2 inches or powder dust into 3-4 inches of slimy greasy clay-like mud. It was difficult to even walk on in flat sections, let alone run. On ascents, runners were having to pull them selves up by grabbing bushes on the side of the trail. On descents, people were saying it was scary – sliding, falling, etc. 30-45 minute loops were taking people 2 hours. The 8.5 mile loop, which took me 1 hour and 45 minutes was taking people 3+ hours. If the race had been smaller, maybe the trail wouldn’t have been so badly damaged and it would have been just a muddy course – not an un-runnable morass.

So tough up, right? Just go slop it out! Did I mention that temps had dropped and the rain had turned to snow? Yeah. Snow. Coming down hard. At least an inch from 5:30-6:30 and getting harder. Now, people were coming in hypothermic and a 4 hour struggle to finish their loop. A runner on a friend’s team got sent to the Kane County hospital with severe hypothermia and a core body temperature of 94 degrees! I watched one lady come up to the bonfire, crouch down and desperately try to warm up her fingers – sobbing that she couldn’t feel them. We suggested she go to the aid tent or the lodge – where it was toasty warm.

I went in and got our bib, thinking I should give it a shot. I took off and after heading down about 3/4 mile of trail, turned around. The trail was impassable. I could barely keep upright and it was mostly flat by that point. Having stood on the rain/snow for 2 hours , I was soaked and suddenly aware of how numb my fingers and toes were. I turned in my bib and headed to camp. As I was telling the team that I had dropped as well as the runner before me, word spread through the camp that Ragnar had cancelled the rest of the race. VERY smart call. In the end, search and rescue went out and made sure all 10-22 missing runners were found and accounted for.  I spare the details, but getting out of there (snow was really pounding now) was a mess.

I was disappointed that I didn’t get to do all 3 loops. I was racing for free, but suspect that those who had paid for 2/3 of a race were more disappointed. More frustrating, however, was my feeling that it could have been prevented. The rain and snow was an act of nature – but if it had fallen upon trails not so badly damaged by the 300+ 8 person teams, it would have still been runnable. It would have been cold and wet and muddy. But it wouldn’t have turned into a dangerous situation where people were stuck out on a 3 hour loop, when only prepare for a 45 minute one.

Like the Dust Bowl, decisions made by man turned a bad situation into a crisis. Drought would have ruined a lot of farmers, but the Great Plains wouldn’t have blown away and become an ecological and economic disaster at the scale it became.

At the Zion Ragnar, it would have been a tough one and lots of people would have dropped regardless – but many would have been able to soldier on and have stories to tell of it. Maybe it wouldn’t have been cancelled and people wouldn’t have been sent to the ER with hypothermia.

So, how do I end this? First, I had a good time. It was fun. The running and camaraderie, that is. The Ragnar “scene,” not so much. The size of it wasn’t my scene. I know Ragnar is a business and wants to maximize profits, but I wonder if they restricted the size of the Trail Relays and kept them a bit smaller, a bit more low- key, a bit more intimate – if runners would have a more enjoyable time. I think they would. Of all the trail runners and trail ultra marathoners I have talked to, most avoid Ragnar because they don’t like the scene. If run differently and on a smaller scale, I wonder if some would be excited about the opportunity to do a relay race together. Profits would be much smaller, but rather than most of the serious trail-running community avoiding Ragnar, maybe they would participate. Perhaps. Maybe not. I don’t know. I’m just barely getting into trail running and getting to know the community.

So would I do a trail Ragnar again? Probably not. It was a good experience and I’m glad I did it. Very glad. I had a lot of fun. I am bummed that my only day-time loop was the non-scenic one, but oh well.

ALSO – I ran in brand new Altra Olympus shoes. They were amazing. I’ll so a gear review about them later.