Hood To Coast 2011 Race Report - It Begins

With a 3:45pm start time on top of Mt. Hood, just an hour outside of Portland without traffic, there was no real sense of urgency on the morning of the race. There was definitely a sense of tension and anticipation as lists were checked and plans were made, remade and repeated aloud to ensure understanding. Normally vans would have been packed the night before in anticipation. On this day we got up, sought out coffee, fueled up both vans, decorated them, packed them and waited for Van 1's occupants to amass. Riding in Van 1 would be (from left to right) Marc, Naomi, Amy, Dan, Stephen and Team Captain Rachel.

Van 1 is ready to roll!

Sometime around lunch Van 1 talked a bunch of smack, dished out a round of hugs and high fives and headed for the start line. We'd learned in past years to leave extra early for the start and for at least the first couple of van exchanges. Traffic up the mountain on H2C days can get pretty slow and there's a surprising amount of registration activity to perform once you're up there. I was in Van 1 in 2007 and I remember getting up there thinking we had plenty of time and ending up basically pinning a number on our first runner as she bolted out of the start gate.

They made it up in time to gawk at some vans and costumes and to hit the merchandise table. This sparked a realization for those of us in Van 2, how were we going to get merch? Since Nike took over the race, the official race merchandise has vastly improved in quality and desirability. They sell out of everything every year. If we weren't at the start line and wouldn't be at the finish until 9pm the next day, we were probably out of luck for merch. Bummer. This was the first disappointment surrounding our late start time. (Luckily I have an awesome girlfriend/volunteerfriend who hit the beach in Seaside early on Saturday and scored me a cool shirt. Thanks, love!)

682 lurks in the shadows and no one suspects a thing...

They're off! Go, Rachel!

Back in Portland, Van 2 lounged around watching TV and waited. The race had begun at 3am under an apparently terrifying spectacle of lightning flashing and striking all around the mountain; the runners were shook by the booming thunder and were doused with rain. We envied them. We waited. We repeated the schedule over and over and got it wrong again and again out of a tense eagerness to get going already. Weren't we supposed to leave for Sandy at 4? 4:30? Nope. Just wait for it. More team members arrived and our volunteers left for their post, my first exchange. Around 6:15 our final runner arrived, a stranger to all present who had accepted a challenge while drinking with the captain, Burke. Riding in Van 2 would be Lisa, Shawn, Burke, Jessica, Morgan and Matthew. We were lucky enough to have a driver, Jessica's husband and my long-time friend, David (pictured below in shadow form).

I thought we were all going to be flexing. Guess not.

On our way up we got a call from the volunteers. They'd gotten to their exchange and had forgotten flashlights and flashy blinkers. No problem. We'd pick some up at the Safeway we were headed to for the van exchange and would pass them off to Van 1 so they could drive ahead and drop them off on their way back to Portland for real food, a real shower and an hour or two in a real bed. I've learned in past years that, whether you are tired or not, you have to take advantage of that bed time.

We pulled into the Sandy Safeway with an hour to spare and spent the time doing our own van and costume gawking. We had coincidentally parked right next to Jessica's cousin, Nicole's, team. I tried to settle a nervous stomach by munching a couple of awful, awful cherry Pepto chewables and by repeatedly visiting the Honey Bucket. Safeway had cleverly put signs on the Honey Buckets (See also: Porta-Potty, Porta-John, etc...) notifying racers of the array of products available inside the store. "Fresh muffins and bagels inside!" declared the Honey Bucket I visited repeatedly (I try to keep my repetition as repetitious as possible). I was so amused by the signs that I made a point of exclaiming upon my exit, "Those muffins were NOT fresh!"

Jessica waits for Naomi at the first van exchange

The race was on! Sure it had been on for hours but we were finally in the thick of things. Teams were all around us and the excitement of racing carried us through our first sets of legs. The sun had set by the time Jessica set off and by the time she handed off to Burke, it was dark. Burke handed off to me sometime before midnight and I think I ran into the next day.

 Waiting for Burke while distracting my girlfriend/volunteer 

The Flash let the volunteer coordinator know our volunteer was well supported ;)

Before I set off I spent some time chatting with fellow racers. A guy in a flashing fiber optic mohawk asked me about the leg we were about to set off on and I told him where to take the turns and to not worry because volunteers would guide us. I told him I'd say hello again when he inevitably would pass me. I was feeling slow. He did pass me right as we were hitting a few miles of rough dirt trail and was huffing as he went by. "Sorry for breathing so loud", he said. "No problem!" (it really wasn't, he couldn't see it but my headphones were in, a rule violation but not one I was worried about on a protected trail in the middle of the night) "BULLSHIT!", he exclaimed, "I'm annoying the shit out of myself!" and then he was pulling off ahead. The trail was long, straight and pitch black, tall trees and shrubs on both sides and no lights at all. I could see that flashing mohawk getting smaller and smaller for miles. Once those lights were out of view, all I could see was a super illuminated halo of dust in front of my face.

Mohawk was one of three runners to road kill me and I got a road kill myself. My kill later caught back up to me when I caught the cord of my headphones on my swinging monkey arms and flung it down the side of the trail. As she caught up to me clipping my gear back on she said "Your rear flashing light is completely inadequate". What. Ever. She kept pace with me for a while but I decided I didn't like her attitude, turned up my pace and she faded fast. I felt good. I got a little calf cramped at mile 5, as in every one of my training runs, but it wasn't bad and I finished ahead of schedule. Coming in to the exchange I was used to, I found an empty parking lot. "Keep going!" yelled a volunteer. They'd moved the exchange about a hundred feet around a slight bend. As I came in they asked my number and I told them it was 862. "862!" they yelled down the course to the waiting teams. "682! 682!" I started yelling wildly. "Here comes Matt!" said my team.

We made the rest of our exchanges along the Springwater Trail, navigating the new exchange points and new driving routes better than a lot of other teams, including flashing fiber optic mohawk team which repeatedly missed their exchange. It was really confusing and there was a lot of doubt that we were going the right way but we had a great driver and he got us to each exchange with time to spare.

 Shawn hands off to Lisa along the Springwater Trail. Yeah, it's way dark.

Before long we were racing ahead of our last runner to the next van exchange. Morgan would come into that exchange to declare her leg as "really scary" because of the pitch black trail portion and "really creepy" because of the "hobos" downtown. At that exchange under the Hawthorne Bridge in downtown Portland, the runners and "hobos" has crashed out next to each other and were hard to tell apart.

 This is the classic 'arms crossed tight to keep food inside' pose

Rachel looks ready to rock but, after that downhill on Leg 1, her quads were almost audibly screamin'

We drove the couple of miles back to Rachel's place and I immediately crashed out. It was 2:15 and I set the alarm for 4:15. When it went off it was like I was an episode of Jackass and had just been woken from a deep slumber with one guy slapping me in the face and another kicking me in the junk. I limped to the shower and started psyching myself up for what I new would be a very long day.

Next Time: Where'd Everybody Go?