I truly love Hood to Coast. I’m giddy for days leading up to the race, like a kid before Christmas. Okay, like me before Christmas. It is an amazing event, uniting runners from all fifty states and around the world. (Warning, this is incredibly long because I merged two into one, because I’m pretty sure everyone is pretty over listening to me ramble about HTC.)
First off, major kudos must to go to the 3,500+ volunteers it takes to get this event off the ground. Without them, we could not run. Double kudos to the volunteers who get stuck in Mist at 3 am. You folks are truly amazing. Thank you for attempting to organize chaos, for yelling our team numbers out so we can get our next runner in the chute, for picking up garbage, for pointing the way so we don’t get lost in the turns and for cheering us on when we’d all rather be sleeping. I hope you got plenty of thank-you’s on the course. My team thanked every yellow-volunteer shirt we saw – even after the race.
The thing I love most about this event is the runners. You’ll never meet a nicer group of 15,000 runners. It’s rare to get passed by someone who doesn’t say, “great job, keep it up!” Often times, you have entire conversations with people passing you. One girl passing me told me I had a great pace going and then we had an entire conversation about our different GPS units we were using and how accurate they were, etc. Other teams pull over on the side of the road to cheer on their own team mates . . . and any other runner that happens to go by. Due to the severe heat this year, every van offered water to any runner, regardless of what team they were on.
Leg 4, my first leg, was going to be the worst of the three. It had no shade, was long, and was alongside a major road, Hwy 26. That being said, it was also my best run. I pulled in sub-nine minute miles which was great and passed Lou, one of the two guys who have run HTC all 30 years. I was running between noon and one and it was the hottest weekend of the year. Six miles downhill and the last mile was uphill. At the top of that hill, with about half a mile to go, I walked for about 20 yards. I figured I was either going to have to walk or puke, and puking was going to take way more time and not get me any closer to the exchange. I’ve never been so happy to see an exchange. Well, until the last leg anyway.
Leg 4 Stats: Miles – 7.17; Time - 1:02:44, Avg. Pace – 8:45 min/mile, Elev. Gain – 79 ft, Elev. Loss – 647 ft.
Leg 16, my second leg, was interesting because I had a running buddy. One of the guys in our van is training for a 100 mile race and needed to log some extra miles. So for the night run, instead of just running his leg 15, he ran 14, 15 and 16. What would have been an incredibly boring run for four miles on highway 30 turned out to be not too bad. Because we were running my pace and not his, Stephen could keep a running dialogue going. Every once in a while I’d ask him a question that would let him ramble on for a while to keep the conversation going. And then when a volunteer would cheer us on, he’d tell them that the two of us were running all the way to Seaside, just us. Ha! It was an amusing and entertaining four miles.
Leg 16 Stats: Miles – 4.09; Time - 38:11, Avg. Pace – 9:15 min/mile, Elev. Gain – 67 ft, Elev. Loss – 75 ft.
The third leg always sucks. I don’t care how great of shape you’re in, it hurts. The third leg is where you have to be stronger in mind than in body because your legs want to stop. Your body is telling you that it’s already ran twice, you haven’t slept and you haven’t really had a decent meal. It’s done. And this is where I tell myself that I’m a whole lot closer to the van and being done if I just run the damn thing. This year was a surprise for me though. My legs weren’t nearly as shot as they usually were at this point. Normally it’s like running with tree trunks for legs, but my legs felt pretty good. I don’t know if it’s because my first two legs has less rolling hills than in years past or if was the weight training and stronger legs overall, but whatever the reason, this leg didn’t suck as much as usual. Don’t get me wrong, it was hard as hell, but mostly I just felt tired, not completely thrashed. And there is no feeling better than handing off that slimy, sweaty disgusting slap bracelet of a baton for the last time. The knowledge that you’re done and you never have to run again is like aloe on a sunburn. You still hurt, but you’re feeling oh so much better.
Leg 28 Stats: Miles – 4.08; Time – 37:41, Avg. Pace – 9:12 min/mile, Elev. Gain – 267 ft, Elev. Loss – 90 ft.
I love HTC, the volunteers, the runners, almost everything about it. This year, in time for the 30th anniversary, 250 teams were added to the race. Keeping in mind that I love HTC, adding 500 vans to the course created a cluster of epic proportions. I know there are teams out there that had no issues or saw no difference in traffic from previous years. Consider yourself lucky, and please understand how incredibly frustrating this experience was for the thousands of us who were adversely affected by the traffic issues. When an elite team loses the race because their vans are stuck in traffic, something needs to be fixed. (I know they were penalized because they broke a rule, and yes we should all know the rules, but the issue stemmed from the fact that they couldn’t get their next runners to where they needed to be.)
I was in Van 1 and traffic for us started backing up around exchange 18, at the fairgrounds. This would be the first, but not the last time, our runner beat the van there. After finally getting to our runner and making the van exchange, it was 1am and all we want to do is get to Mist and roll our sleeping bags out on the hard, uneven ground. A trip that normally takes 50 minutes took almost two hours. The last hour of which was in bumper to bumper traffic trying to get into the field at Mist.
After successfully making the exchange at Mist, we started running again around 5am. The first three exchanges went fine. We were barely moving, but at least we were going faster than the runner. By the time I was finishing up my last leg this was no longer the case. My van passed me about 10 minutes into my estimated 40 minute run. By the time I was nearing the end, current runners would knock on their vans as they ran by, the next runner would hop out of the van and run with them the rest of the way and continue on. The finishing runner then had to walk back to the van. For my leg, this was probably only a quarter mile. That was as short as the trek got.
While not having to pull into the exchanges and park can reduce time, it also means there is never a Honey Bucket break. Prior to the sixth runner taking off, with vans barely moving, runners started bailing out of the vans and heading to the woods. The official rules say that you’re only to use Honey Buckets. Whoever wrote those rules clearly has never run this race, because by the last set of legs you’re lucky to be able to stop for a Honey Bucket.
The last van exchange is always the worst. Cell phones don’t work. Walkie talkies work about half a mile away. The problem is that the runner is about 2 miles ahead of the van at this point so you just have to pray that the other van is there and ready to go. This is where you see people bailing out of their vans miles early to run up to the exchange. Our last runner had to walk about a mile and a half back to the van.
Once we got to the beach, things got really interesting. Our last runner was headed into Seaside and Van 2 was stuck in traffic that wasn’t moving. In the end, Van 2 never made it to the beach, which was disappointing as they had 5 new HTC runners. After talking to others, we weren’t the only ones this happened to. Many, many Van 2’s either never made it to the beach or managed to get there 90-120 minutes after their runner. There were a lot of teams running across the finish line with 7 instead of 12. In the previous three years I’ve done this, Van 2 is usually there within 15 minutes of the runner and the finish line is experienced as a team.
Despite the traffic cluster f#$% of epic proportions, team #567 – Dancing Elk, did fantastic. We hit every exchange and most importantly, every van exchange, including the ones where both cell phones and walkie talkies don’t work! Ours were not the runners left standing on the side of the road in Mist in the middle of the night having to wait for 45-90 minutes for their next runner to show up. After the race I was thinking that I’d be okay taking a break next year. Someone just emailed me and asked if they put a van of 6 together could I do the other? Two days after the race I’ve already forgotten the traffic, pain and exhaustion and am looking forward to 2012.
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