Chattanooga’s Heather Lam loves to run.
But at 2 a.m., she prefers to sleep.
For once, for the first time she said, running will win out against the battle for sleep.
Lam and dozens of other runners from across the region and the nation will participate in a the Ragnar Relay Tennessee race which begins at sunrise on Friday and ends around sunset on Saturday with relay teams running from Chattanooga to Nashville.
“Bragging rights was the main appeal, to be able to say that we’ve done a superrace and not a half-marathon or a full marathon, but a full race,” said Lam, captain of the 12-person team Running 4 A Reason, which is raising money for the Chambliss Shelter Children’s Home.
“It is going to be remembered for every and bragged about for many days,” said Lam, who pounds the pavement near her neighborhood and in Ooltewah as well. “It’s an endurance test to sit in a car after a run and wait for your next time. But to be cutting up with people in the car… it’s going to be memorable.”
A handful of Ragnar Races – overnight relay races which began in 2004 out in Utah – are held across the country each year, and there are 15 on the schedule for next year.
The Tennessee race has 165 teams with at least 12 members on each team. There are 97 participants from Chattanooga and at least one Chattanoogan on 19 teams.
“They’re incredibly different races,” said race director Leslie Keener. “Normally, running is a pretty solo sport unless you’re on a track team. But when you get on a team, you can see why it appeals to a lot of people.”
Lam’s team consists of a dozen runners, including two that had never thought of running more than a mile unless life and limb depended on it, who will each run three legs of eight to 10 miles.
“We don’t have a baton, it’s a rocking ’80s slap-bracelet,” Lam said. “I’ve prepared magazines, cards, blow horns and glow-sticks to root on all the other runners in the middle of the night.”
This is Tennessee’s first race, and it will conclude with a post-race party featuring the Grammy-nominated country group LoneStar. Keener said she expects to conduct the race annually.
Contact David Uchiyama at duchiyama@timesfree? press.com ? or at 423-757-6484. Follow him on Twitter at twit? ter.com/UchSports? .