Hood To Coast 2011 Race Report - Prelude

I'd been a little worried about my physical and mental readiness leading up to this Hood To Coast. Sure, it would be my fourth time participating (2005, 2007, 2009, 2011) but I'd had a tough training period with an injury to my foot recurring a month before the race and a head cold flooring (couching) me a week ahead of time. Mentally, I'd just not been in to running this year. I'd only registered for one other race, a rainy run of Bay To Breakers that made me feel like I still had the capacity to run distances, and had difficulty sticking to a training schedule. Had I gotten blase about running? Lazy? Yes, probably. Still, I'd been charging up and down the Berkeley Hills a few times a week and had psyched myself up mentally, trying to overcome a mental wall that had been put up two years earlier at the last running of the relay.

Team Under Domination - 2007

In 2009 I had trained hard and wanted to see myself and my team put in a great finish time. I was looking forward to some personal bests on a set of legs I'd had some past experience with. I wanted to crush it. Instead, it crushed me. Maybe it was nerves. Or maybe it was heat exhaustion from my first gruelingly hot leg on an exposed trail in midday sun. Or maybe it was the stomach flu or food poisoning or solar flares or or or... yeah. Long story short, I spent 24 hours on the road losing my lunch every other stop, unable to run my last leg (I still ran three legs that year but that's a different story). I was crushed. Knowing the pain and exhaustion my teammates were in, I'd asked them to do the impossible and cover my last leg, an 8 miler, on top of their own miles. I was mentally defeated for months. And then I'd sustained an injury. (Runners, such prima donnas!)

Team Slow Dip Ahead - 2009

When my plane touched down late Thursday morning, I was psyched. Pumped. Ready to rock. I wanted to run. Now. Unfortunately, Instead of our usual mid to late morning start time, we were starting at 3:45pm. Really? Every other team we ran into and told this to looked at us in awe. They assumed we were elites and would would come flying past them in the middle of the night. Not quite. This year, as in past years, we were expecting and expected by Hood To Coast to finish in just under 29 hours. This would have us at the finish line at 8:49pm, 11 minutes before the line was set to close. We were a little disappointed but put our faith on the H2C planning staff and prepared to finish on the beach under a barrage of fireworks. What could be more awesome than that?

Team Slow Dip Ahead - 2009

The Portland Summer heat is always a bit of a shock to the system when traveling from the SF Bay area. Our summers are very cool, mild and marked by an incessant phalanx of fog that marches into the Berkeley Hills day after day. I'm never really prepared for the 80-90 temps that H2C usually throws at you on day one. But being in Van 2, I sensed a reprieve. If our team was starting so late in the afternoon, my first leg would be after midnight, my second would be late morning and further west so cooler and my last leg would be early evening out towards to coast. Perfect. Yes, my Van 1 teammates would suffer the heat repeatedly but they'd also be taking showers, chilling on the beach and eating real food hours before we would.

Van 2 'Stache - 2009

We spent the day picking up vans and teammates old and new. We packed, planned and decorated. We were pumped, stoked and had a hankering for road kill. The tension to get on the road was palpable. We all palped it. At that point we'd have gladly switched with a 3am start time team just to get out and get racing.

Next Time - The agony of victory, the thrill of defeat...