Hood To Coast 2008

Friday and Saturday, August 22 and 23 Trisha and I were part of the Glory Daze team that ran the Hood to Coast Relay. Our team averaged 8:31 per mile to place 105/241 in the male open division. Strong running by everyone on the team!

This is a relay race where 2 vans with 6 people each run various legs of the distance from Mt Hood's Timberline lodge to the beach in Seaside Oregon, total of 197 miles. Each leg of the race is between 4 and 8 miles. It was my first time doing this event while it was Trisha's fourth time.

Like every other person on our team Trisha and I were responsible for running 3 legs of the journey. Unlike anyone else on the team, it was also our 16th wedding anniversary: I had a great time running with my best friend!

The way Hood to Coast (HTC) works is that each team has 2 vans of 6 people. Each person passes off to the next person within the van rotation while the sixth person passes off to the next van. Then you have a 4 to 5 hour break before you start your van's next rotation. Our van had Tarik, Trisha, Darin, Mike, James and Ryan (in order of our legs). Mary was our van 2 honorary member biking what seemed like most of the course to meet up with the team. Van 1 was Marie, Casey, Melissa, Jen, Jason and Emily.

We ran Trisha's first leg in the dark together. It was great running, talking and watching the other racer's and the stars together. Great way to spend your anniversary evening :-)
After warming up with Trisha, I ran my first leg along the Springwater corridor. Besides some stomach issues, I was able to run well in the dark and do some real sweating :-)

Once our van finished all of our first 6 legs, we retired for some hours of sleep at Ryan's. Man, did that time fly! We loaded back into the van around 4:30 am.

Trisha's second leg was early Saturday morning starting around 6:15 am. She ran what, I thought, was the hardest leg with about 800 feet of climbing in 5 miles. She really pounded up the hill with all the guys cheering from the van. We even were caught as she flew by the van with her support team sleepin on the job! Then to compound our "poor" support, I was stationed in the porta potty as she came into the exchange station! So we had about an 11 second delay on that exchange...she was too fast for me! :-)
My second leg I was revved up to really pound. Red Bull was my friend! I ran a gravel road for 5 miles with no real up or down. I cranked the tunes, pushed hard and had a ton of fun. Running people down and trying to keep up with vans while listening to Unbreakable were some of the mental tricks I used to finish with 6:17 mile splits. I was really happy how my body was responding to challenge.

Between the our second and third leg we planned to grab some sleep in a field near the van exchange. We did get some rest but the time was greatly diminished with the bad traffic en route (took about 2 hours to cover ~30 miles) and then to be rudely awaken with some crazy team van pumping out Shakira, Hips Don't Lie . Nasty way to wake up :-(
The wake up call did allow for some time to check out the HTC vans. The Beerlenium Falcon was the best I saw but I really wonder if this machine is street legal??!!

We all ran well for our third legs with Trisha going sub 9 and I was able to hold sub 7 out in the heat and on my longest section.

As an ultra runner, I had done the math and so far I was at around 24 miles...just had to make it up to a marathon :-) So I got our van to drop me to meet up with James so we could pound in the last 2 miles together. James did awesome pushing hard to the finish.
Ryan raced our team in to the finish in Seaside in just under 28 hours...nice!
Some hanging out, pictures and eating and then time to pack up and head back to Portland.

Trisha's results
Leg 8: 4.55 miles in 40:50 (8:58 minutes per mile)
Leg 20: 5.75 miles in 58:07 (10:07 minutes per mile)
Leg 32: 4.09 miles in 36:24 (8:58 minutes per mile)
My results:
Leg 9: 6.89 miles in 47:17 (6:52 minutes per mile)
Leg 21: 5 miles in 31:26 (6:17 minutes per mile)
Leg 33: 7.79 miles in 53:16 (6:50 minutes per mile)

Good times, hard running...great way to spend 28 hours!