A Successful Ragnar Relay for Vail Place!

 By Katie Leverentz

We’re very pleased to announce that our Ragnar Relay Race event was a massive success! A group of 12 runners, event volunteers, driver volunteers, and countless donors have been preparing since January to pull this off and raised about $8500 for Vail Place. We ran for 38 hours, one by one, and finished 371st out of 373 teams. That may sound bad, but guess what? We had 3 members run and they each finished their leg of the race and were so proud and happy for what they accomplished- and that’s all that matters to us. And we finished the darn race!

Philosophy thoughts (aka Katie’s soapbox): When I was studying for my CPRP certificate last year (certified psychiatric rehabilitation practitioner), I learned that helping professionals like me often discourage the people we work with from taking risks. This really impacted me. I don’t mean unsafe risks- I mean taking steps to achieve their dreams. We (social workers) are so afraid of members being disappointed or “failing” that we discourage risk taking and I think Ragnar is a perfect example of not doing this. We could’ve told ourselves that running this race would be too risky for our members- that they can’t do something physically demanding, even if they prepare. This to me is stigma within the helping profession and the Clubhouse model encourages risk-taking- trying something even if we “fail” because the attempt is a success. I think about this a lot with TE. If a member tries a TE and it doesn’t work out, that is not a failure. It’s more important to try something difficult and count that as an accomplishment in and of itself. It reminds me of the DBT skill of Mood Momentum. Helpful moods lead to more helpful moods- Trying something new leads to trying more new things, and can lead to accomplishing other dreams.

Anyways, our runners slept in vans, parks, gymnasiums and were sleep deprived AND STILL ran farther and faster than they thought they would. I’m hoping that my role next year will be getting more runners involved. If you ever want to go for a walk or short run with me, let me know. I’ll have some more formal short runs on the calendar next year. Who knows? Maybe you’ll do the Ragnar Relay next year. Anything is possible!

Missed our fundraiser? You can still donate to help the Recovery Rockstars meet their goal by visiting our page here.