Best Hydration Packs

In 2013, Randall and a former coworker launched a Facebook group, “Dead by Dawn Ragnar Running Club,” to help them stay connected with the friends and friends-of-friends they’d shared Ragnar vans with in the past. The Ryans recruited teams for each of their races last year by posting call-outs in the group, which now counts 58 members. When that wasn’t enough, they turned to Ragnar’s official Facebook page. “We meet somebody new every race and bring them into the group,” Randy says. “Our goal is to make people want to do it again.”

Between registration, food, the vans (rental plus fuel), motels, and travel, the Ryans estimate they each spent about $800 per race, or more than $20,000 total for all of their races. (Their teammates paid for themselves.) “I was fortunate to have worked for a very generous doctor, so I had a lot of money saved,” Randall says.

The Ryans turned the Hawaii Ragnar in October into a vacation and brought their wives and Randy’s three children. “Our wives don’t run,” Randall says.

“But getting to go to Hawaii made them very happy.” Randy’s 19-year-old daughter, Michaela, joined her father and grandfather for the Hawaii Ragnar as well as four others.

Each Ragnar team member is expected to run three separate legs that can range in total mileage from 11 miles to nearly a marathon over the course of the Friday-to-Saturday race. “We tried to let everybody else choose the legs they wanted, then we took whatever was left,” Randy says. “Sometimes new people preferred shorter legs. There’s no leg Dad and I wouldn’t take on.” Randall adds, “One thing Randy and I made clear is that we’re here to challenge ourselves, but the major goal is to get to the finish line.”

Ragnar teams split up into two six-person vans; one van alternates with the other after all of its members have run one leg each. So while one van is on the road, the other gets a break of roughly five or six hours. Some teams opt to sleep in the van after their first leg to prepare for the rest of the relay, but experience has taught the Ryans better. “You don’t feel good after sleeping in the van,” Randall says. “So we would find a motel in the middle of the course that was easy to get to after the first set of legs and book a couple of rooms to allow the resting members to relax and lie down.”

Randall has type 1 diabetes and must monitor his glucose closely. He checks his blood sugar 15 times a day during a race. If it dropped too low—as it did in the last mile of his first leg of the Del Sol Ragnar, when his legs started feeling “rubbery”—he would eat something, usually glucose tablets with Gatorade.

“The only headache was when runners pulled out at the last minute,” Randall says. “In some cases, we had to make do with four in a van instead of six. That meant some teammates had to run extra miles. But other than that, the only disagreement was over where to eat.”

“There was a point in the So Cal Ragnar after the first leg where my dad was ill to the point of almost vomiting,” Randy says. “He got some sleep and ran the next leg. He’s tougher than I ever thought.” Randall adds: “To see my son willing to take on whatever—a 21-mile leg, why not?—I just have to say, ‘Wow.’ Plus, I think, How many men get to do something this great with their son?”

After their Vegas finale, they weren’t sure what they would do next. “But we have several Ragnars planned for next year,” Randall says. “And our wives might join us.”