Hood to Coast is just over two weeks away. 200 miles of running from Mt. Hood to Seaside, Oregon. 625 vans. 15,000 runners. 3,000 volunteers. It’s a pretty amazing feet (pun intended) for all involved, since it takes the average team around 30 hours to complete. This will be my fourth year, and every year brings some new wisdom and experience.
The first year was organized chaos. We had no idea what we were doing, only that we knew we wanted to run this relay. We knew we needed vans and running clothes. Come to find out you also need headlamps and reflective vests and tape and safety pins and on and on and on. Needless to say, I now have a detailed list of everything needed. Not knowing how much to train, I over trained, and after the race didn’t run for months afterwards, had to get a cortisone shot in my hip and had to go through physical therapy. Lesson learned. This race was an experience for sure. In the words of my friend and year one team mate Joe, “this would be really fun if you didn’t have to do all this running shit.”
The second year was organized. I was running the same legs as the year before so I knew exactly what to expect. Van and race wise, everything went smoothly. The problem with having done this race previously though, was now I knew exactly what to expect. As in I knew exactly how painful that third leg was to run. Year two I managed to talk my brother into joining my team. Being as my brother is generally pretty awesome, it was fun to get to do something unusual like this with him. Year two was also the discovery of the most amazing spreadsheet ever. The one someone had designed to estimate where each runner would be when, specifically for HTC. This makes life much easier since our attempt at creating this the previous year was far less than perfect.
By the third year, I could get us organized in my sleep. But this year brought some additional challenges and points of interest. I had decided, and communicated to the entire team, that I did not want to be in charge of reserving vans this year. Come June, we still had no vans. And Portland is out of vans for this weekend by the previous December. So my favorite brother got us a full sized van out of Seattle. The other van managed to find a van from 1985 at the last minute so everything worked out. This was also the year that I was the sole girl in a van full of guys. I can hold my own with guys, but it still made things interesting. I also ended up running my most difficult set of lets this year. Not only did I have a seven plus miler in the night, I ended with a six miler. After no sleep and 12 miles already ran, the last thing you want to do is run another six miles. I opted for getting over quickly and took minutes off my projected time. Nothing is quite as sweet as the feeling of being done.
Year four, I’ve gone back to being the one who reserves vans. I’ve gotten smarter though and rent them from the place down the street from work, not from the airport rental agencies. I’ve also talked my uncle into driving for us again this year. And perhaps my most amazing trick I pulled this year was finding a van mom. My dear friend Ada doesn’t run, but is a huge fan of everyone in my van (I have a really great van this year). She wanted to be part of the team and I suggested that we could use treats for the van. So not only is she hooking us up with baked goods for our 200 mile journey, she’s also making us dinner after the first set of legs. The biggest bummer is that my brother is deployed in Kuwait and can’t run with us this year. Although he’ll probably wake up at 3am on race weekend, picture us running over the Cascades into the night and think, “suckers.”
Unfortunately year four also brought on some laziness. My running hasn’t been quite where I’d like it to be. (i.e. over training is not an issue this year) It hasn’t come as easy as it usually does. I’m less motivated than ever. Partly because I know I can do this. It might hurt, but I’ll get through it no problem. So with two weeks to go, I really need to get my butt in gear. As the race gets closer, I’m getting more excited and less full of dread. I’m in a van for thirty plus hours with some of my favorite friends and it can’t really get any better than that.
The running might not be there, but the vans, lights, vests, packing lists and everything else we need is. And since the whole point is to have fun on this ridiculously long and crazy journey, I say bring it on. All the way from Hood to Coast.
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