Ragnar Relay unites neighbors as teammates

PARK CITY — Some neighborhoods plan picnics, barbecues or even softball games to get to know each other.

Dixie Robinson's neighborhood decided the way to build community spirit was for 12 of them to spend nearly 30 hours squashed into two vans running 188 miles across Utah's Wasatch Mountains.

The neighbors decided running the Ragnar Relay's Wasatch Back would be the perfect social get-together for an active group.

"We're all a bunch of runners, and we'd wanted to do it for a while," said Robinson, who was the captain of the Legacy Ranch Runners, a community in Herriman. "We had just never put a team together in time. This year we finally got it together."

The fact that the race, which starts in Logan on Friday and ends in Park City on Saturday, sold out months ago, meant some line-up changes, but in the end, Robinson said the 12 neighbors' experience exceeded their expectations.

"It was really fun," she said. "I would totally do it again."

BYU won the race with a time of 17:49:18. 26.2 Running Company was second with a time of 18:32:06. The complete race results can be found on the race's Web site at ragnarrelay.com.

For the first time in any of the Ragnar Relays, there was rain at the finish of a race. Temperatures were fairly warm Friday but much more mild than last year.

"Everything went pretty well," said Tanner Bell, co-founder of the race series. He said the company is always looking for ways to improve the races and more changes were possible for next year's race.

Robinson said the rain during her last leg — which is the race's toughest, Ragnar, a four-mile climb through Wasatch Mountain State Park that gains 1,678 feet in elevation — actually helped her.

"That was actually kind of nice," she said. "Although the muddy legs and muddy feet were interesting."

Ragnar Relay officials said adding more than 100 new teams to the mix went fairly smoothly thanks to some course changes. The most notable was moving the second-to-last major exchange from Rockport to South Field Park.

In fact, the changes made such a difference, many runners said they didn't notice the more crowded field of competitors.