SOLDIER HOLLOW — After 13 years of planning, staging and learning from the Ragnar Relay’s Wasatch Back, co-founder and president Tanner Bell didn’t think anything he saw on the 200-mile course this weekend could surprise him.
“I kind of thought, knowing the course forward and backward, knowing the area, I mean, I feel like I know every square inch of the roads from Logan to Park City,” said Bell, who ran the course that launched the country’s most successful relay race series for the first time since he and Dan Hill and Steve Hill created the first 12-runner relay race along the backside of the Wasatch Mountains. “I was kind of surprised to see it though the runners’ eyes, to be able to just run and experience the race was really amazing.”
An Oregon native, Steve Hill was inspired by Hood to Coast, the oldest overnight relay race in the country, and he’d always wanted to try to create a similar race in Utah. But it wasn’t until his son, Dan, and his high school friend, Bell, joined him in that dream that the vision took shape.
“Working it is different,” Bell said. “You’re not there to sort of soak in the beauty. …And so, I was kind of struck by, well, really impressed by that. It was also fun to sort of remember why we were so inspired the first time we started routing the course. Every year, I kind of forget. It’s so green, so beautiful, so pretty.”
The trio staged that first relay race in 2004, starting it at the Hardware Ranch in Logan and finishing on Park City’s Main Street. On that weekend 13 summers ago, 22 teams signed up for the event.
This weekend, 700 teams signed up for the sold-out race, consisting of about 8,000 runners. Ragnar officials have reduced the number of teams the last couple of years hoping to enhance the experience for both runners and the communities through which they travel.
None of the men realized the magic that asking 12 people to spend two days running together would create. To this day, the race remains special to all three men, even after both Steve and Dan Hill left the company. Ragnar Relay Series now offers 37 events in both road and trail relay races.
“I think there is a sort of culture and a vibe to Wasatch Back that’s different from any of our other races. It has the friends, family and co-worker appeal; everybody sort of does it. It just has broad appeal. In other parts of the nation, it still has broad appeal, but it’s more exclusive to runners and runners’ groups. In Utah, Wasatch Back sort of transcends that.”
Bell ran on a team named “The Harry Trotters” — a play on Harry Potter — with his wife and other family members, including his mom, who’s one of fewer than 10 people who've run the race every year since it launched.
“Running with my family was awesome,” he said, noting they have been involved in many ways since he helped create the race series. In fact, his father was the main finish line volunteer for many years. “It was fun to just be a team and experience it together.” During this weekend’s event, he said he often found himself contemplating why the race creates such unique and transformative experiences for participants.
“It’s just such a trying event in such a unique way,” said Bell, who will move to England this summer with his wife and four children to help Ragnar explore event opportunities in Europe. “It’s not immediately apparent why it’s so trying.”
In other races, the challenges are obvious, maybe even part of the attraction. But with Ragnar, the difficulty is unexpected, the changes in oneself and in the relationships of those experiencing them together are one of the race’s great gifts.
“To the casual observer it’s just vans and people running,” he said. “You just never know until you’ve done it. I was sitting behind one of the vans thinking, ‘Something so amazing is happening in each one of those vans, and they don’t know it yet.’”
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