2006 Hood-to-Coast relay

In reality the HTC began in November of '05 when we sent in our entry fee and registration. A couple of months later we found out we had made the limited field (1,000 teams, usually over 1,400 entries get sent in). So we had 8 members committed and had to fill up the team with 4 additional runners. Somehow, miraculously, the 12 we arrived at 5 months before the race began actually ended up being the 12 we would toe the line with. Many teams desperately scramble for last minute replacements due to injuries, unforseen conflicts, runners backing out, etc. Cyrus gave us a couple of scares with his separated shoulder and infected foot a few weeks before the race but we assured him the spot was his if he were able to run at all.

Planes, vans, lodging, our running order...all the final details were hammered out over various nights out at the bars for $1 burgers and $2 beers. We were ready for the WMDs to Unleashed on the HTC course. Looking at previous year's results, knowing that we were driving ourselves and that this was our first ever HTC, we figured a good performance would put us between 15th-20th, and a bad race would still place us around 30th.

Wednesday night Tim and I masterfully crafted the red & orange mohawk I would sport for the rest of the weekend. Mindy & Craig stopped by after seeing Wicked to affirm that it was completely "fabulous". The best part about a mohawk is that you can sleep on the side of your head without messing up your hair.

Thursday morning Tim, Ricky & I take a cab to the Blue line up to O'hare. we see Paul in the check-in line, and then see Dan, Lorne & Hutton before we go through security. Everyone was sure I'd get extra attention in the baggage screening process with the mohawk, but that didn't happen. I had wondered if the government was ever monitoring our conversations due to the following: our team name was WMDs-Unleashed; There were 12 of us, and 10 of us were flying on the same flight from O'hare to PDX. Anyway, the flight was delayed a few hours, so we talked to a few other passengers who were also running the HTC. Everyone has the same conversations: "how many have you run?" "which leg are you running?" "how fast is your team?" We finally arrive in Portland, pick up our 2 vans and drive to the empty house Ryan has hooked up for the evening. A friend of his in town is selling a house and we're crashing there for the evening. We go for a short run that was supposed to be easy. The house is in the very hilly southwest side of town, so the first half of the run is downhill and the second is back uphill. Not very fun.

We meet Ryan's friends Jane & Wayne at a fantastic pizza place for dinner, then head back downtown to catch up with Cyrus at the bars he's at with his friends. He's been in town for a day already. Some of the guys go home, some of us stay out and have a *few* drinks. I decide to drive everyone, and most of us leave around 1am. Rob and Ricky stay out for another few hours, and eventually wake me up at 3am by calling and asking for the address to the house because their cabbie was lost.

Friday morning, we drive downtown and get a quick 30 minute run in on the riverfront. It's strange to think that the race starts today, and there are teams already on the course out by Government Camp. I won't run for at least another 15 hours. The riverfront area we're on right now is part of Hutton's leg #13. Breakfast, shoppping, packing, driving, fast forward to our arrival at the base of Mt. Hood. We've been driving upstream on the course and the race looks like a blast.

In government camp we stop at the Huckleberry Inn for a late lunch. Apparently the Huckleberry Shake is like the greatest thing ever invented, but I'm going with the hot ham n' cheese. Leg 2 runs right by the Inn and we watch more teams come running past.

We drive on up the last 8 miles of the ascent to the Timberline Lodge and start area. Tons of vans, the start area is really cool. We finishe decorating the vans with the markers we picked up this morning and go watch the start of some waves. About 5 minutes before each wave starts the announcers give us the team names of every team in there and how many HTC's they've done before. Each team shakes the other teams hands, wishes them luck, and they start exactly on the dot every 15 minutes. Last minute team meeting re-enforces the "Tempo-Tempo-Race" strategry we're going with for the 3 legs.

Check-In with the safety equipment, take a few quick team pictures, and now it's go-time. Our wave has got some superstar teams -- Team XO (last year's winners), Bucknell Alumni, Bucknell Fossils Alumni, Team BooCoo, several teams comprised of former DI athletes, a few of the top coed teams, a handful of masters teams, and the WMDs Unleashed.

Introducing Van #1
Leg 1 -- Hutton -- former hockey player in HS & College, for some reason he got into running several years back and has been improving by leaps and bounds. John PR'd in the Boston Marathon this past year by around 8 minutes. His last 1/2 marathon was a 5-6 minute PR.
Leg 2 -- Dr. Jim -- former professional cyclist/triathlete. Now Jim's in the middle of his ER residency, has a 1 year old son named Finn, and is trying his hand at longer distances in running. His Chicago Marathon should be around 2:30
Leg 3 -- Ryan -- the mastermind behind our HTC trip. Ryan's from the area, got us into the race, booked the house we're staying in, and has pretty much handled everything logistical on the trip. He's also been running ridiculous mileage this year, nearly always above 85 miles a week.
Leg 4 -- Paul -- he'll be the first to tell you he's the slowest leg on our team, but Paul's probably also the most sane and is an excellent voice of reason for the trip.
Leg 5 -- Ricky -- youngest on the team and definitely our most talented. The kid ran the 400m and 800m in High School and now is training for the Olympic Trials Qualifying Standard in the marathon (2:22).
Leg 6 -- Lorne -- Dan's younger brother, and he's in the best shape of his life. Lorne's been PR-ing in every distance this year. Another guy who's going to run a great marathon in October.

So our wave starts and John is clearly holding back on the downhill. We drive a few miles down the road to watch the leaders go by and they all apparently believe there's prize money at the finish of the first 6 miles. LOOONG way to go boys. Hutton comes by in around 20th, points to the guy 20 yards in front of him and casually says, "I'll catch that guy." We all laugh. Back into the van and drive to the Huckleberry Inn again, John and Dr. Jim have requested Huckleberry Shakes to refuel after their first leg. We get them exchange them over to Van 1, watch Dr. Jim come galloping by, and then it's off to dinner at Subway and to drive down to transition area #6, where we will take the baton and start our first legs.

Fast forward a few hours and Cyrus is ready to roll. Fred Meyer is the title sponsor of the HTC (think Wal-Mart or Target). This first "major" transition area is right outside of a Fred Meyer, and the entire parking lot is full of vans for the race. We meet up with the other van, get their clipboard, and Cyrus heads over to the transition area across the street.

Introducing Van #2
Cyrus -- this guy has had a bad year. After an Ironman in Europe last year he broke a bone in his foot, which repeatedly got infected after the surgery, so he ended up having several. After finally healing and getting into shape insanely fast, Cyrus separated his shoulder in a nasty bicycle accident. He got clearance to run with that injury, and then discovered his foot is infected and swelling up again, which will require another surgery.
Hiatt -- another powerhouse. Hiatt ran at Kent State and has been posting some insane times this summer. Hiatt's also probably mentally unstable -- after blowing up at Boston and running in the 2:50's he tried to run 20 miles solo at 2:30 marathon pace less than a week later after a full work day just to prove he could do it.
Tim -- my college roommate and primary training partner. Tim is definitely one of the hardest workers on the crew, except he's been out of shape for over a year and has finally gotten his competitive fire back this summer.
Rob -- our captain, longest tenured member of the Fleet Feet racing team. Rob didn't start running until his 30th birthday. Now his marathon PR is in the 2:30's.
D-Train -- Our most recent Ironman, Dan just finished Lake Placid about a month ago in 10 hours and 16 minutes. Also known as Papa Bear due to his insistence that he is obviously the Alpha Male.
Kmac -- i'm running anchor for the team. I've had a good season of training but have yet to really set any post-collegiate PR's. Hopefully that changes by the marathon.

Dan comes back to the van and lets us know that Cyrus is on the road. I'm driving for now, and we'll develop a bit of a rotation within the van that mostly switches from Dan->Kyle->Cyrus with Hiatt occassionally giving us a break. Cyrus motors through his first leg without incident and gets the baton to Tim. Tim's first leg is mostly on a dark crushed gravel path. He comes into the exchange and gets Hiatt rolling. We're not quite running the times that the HTC "predictor" file has given us -- it's based on submitting a current 10k time and applying various factors to determine what each leg will be run at and spitting out predicted times as well as a final team time -- which is a final time of 19:28:28, I believe. Hiatt comes in and send Rob out on the road. It's approaching midnight in Oregon, and is around 2am Chicago time. Rob comes into the exchange and Dan takes off for his first leg. I'm getting jittery now -- i've gotten a bit of a warmup in while waiting for Dan to start his leg and I'm antsy to run. I've always thought I ran fast at night, simply because it's easier to convince yourself someone is chasing you and there's more of a thrill to running at night. my splits from the first leg would prove that i wasn't quite running as fast as i thought or felt i was.

Leg 1 recap (written shortly after I ran leg 1)
For the record I tried to get Rob and Ricky to leave the bar 1.5 hours before they actually did last night. Regardless, I'm the last one on the team to run my first leg and my dogs are barking as I wait for the D-Train to pull into the station. It's shortly after 1am when he steamrolls his way in and I take off. 400m into my leg a car with some kids drives by and yells, "Wouldn't you rather be doing something else right now?!?!" No. This is exactly what I want to be doing. I'm heading into downtown Portland from the Southeast and I start counting the casualties. When I get up to 16 or 17 I'm shocked to be passed by a blonde ponytail on a gorgeous set of legs. This girl is flying. I hang right behind her for about a half mile before realizing this is stupid and I should let her go. I do, and she quickly distances me. I pass a few house parties with people yelling, cheering, or being 100% indifferent. On the city streets of Portland a homeless man taunts another runner and I. "Hey! You know what you get if you win? NOTHING!" and he bursts out in laughter. The death toll climbs to 28 by the time I reach Hawthorne Bridge and hand off to Hutton in the most f-ed up exchange ever. I nearly barreled over a guy trying to take a picture standing in the middle of the course and then just about flattened another as I was trying to stop. 1 tempo run down.

So that's 1 leg down, and now I can't find my van or teammates anywhere. this would prove to be a common theme after every leg that I finish. I get a few laps around the huge parking lot for a cool down and we drive ahead to the next transition area. My memory of this part of the trip is pretty hazy, mostly because it involved variable intervals of sleep, what i would guess ranged from 2 minutes to 15 minutes, for the next 1.5 hours. I had tried sleeping in the driver's seat. When that proved to be uncomfortable I noticed the back seat of the van was open and took that. Apparently it was only open because Cyrus had gone to the bathroom, but it was too dark and we were all kind of "out of it", so I got away with stealing the most comfortable spot in the van.

Eventually we hear from the other van that Ricky has started his leg, so it's time for us to start looking alive. I remember exiting the van to head over to the transition area with the clipboard, and I see Lorne go running by the second I start paying attention to what I'm doing. So there we go, Cyrus is back on the course and our van is back in action. Hiatt & Tim's legs are both on one-lane dirt roads -- the HTC Handbook recommends these runners wear bandanas due to the high amount of dust that gets kicked up by passing vans. Hiatt would later report that after 4 vans passed him in quick succession he puked from the dirt inhalation. Another team was either named "Puke & Rally" or had that on the side of their vans. After Hiatt's story we start throwing that phrase around the rest of the trip. Tim has some digestive problems that don't necessarily need to be discussed in detail, so we won't go into them here. Everyone has been hammering out solid second legs, we're continuing to pass a ludicrous number of teams, and we're all be conscious of saving something for the third leg. Rob comes into sight and almost runs me (and several others) over as he doesn't know where the transition area is. D-train's on the course, and I'm warmed up and ready to roll.

Leg 2 recap (also written shortly after finishing leg 2)
I'm not sure exactly what time it is but it feels cold out. D-Train started his leg shirtless, so I'm following suit. He comes into sight earlier than I expected, always a good sign. This leg is my shortest, 4.9 miles, so I have to fight the urge to go out fast. Immediately after I start I see the girl who dusted me on the first leg warming up on the other side of the road. I shout, "I'll be waitingÂ" and she laughs. There's a steady stream of slower runners for me to pick off. I know I'm running faster than the first leg and my wheels are getting excellent turnover. Runner after runner I keep motivating myself to fly up through the field. Vans are passing on the right and many of them I recognize from transition areas we've been through over the course of the race. Several of them cheer for me, obviously because I'm a crazed maniac with an orange and red Mohawk running shirtless in 55 degree Portland weather, wearing sunglasses even though the sun isn't really out yet. My roadkill count is up to 28 when a volunteer tells me I have a quarter mile to go. We haven't had cell phone service in about 2 hours so I pray Hutton and the rest of van 1 are waiting at the exchange zone. The "quarter mile" turned out to be a half mile, but I buried it anyway. #33 is passed right before the exchange zone as John and I get a great running exchange. Turns out I ran 2 minutes faster than my projected time and we're now onto the 3rd legs. Greatness awaits, I know I've got some gas left in the tank to unleash my Jr. High Kick on the beach party.

After finishing my leg, and again wondering where the hell our van and my teammates are, we finally get going on the course. We still have to get the clipboard to the other van, due to traffic congestion they had left Hutton in the transition area and driven ahead to the next TA. We pull up and hand them the clipboard, then drive off to where we'll be needed next. So we're in the middle of nowhere, Oregon, and we realize that we are about to run out of gas. The low fuel light has come on, gone off, and come back on again. We don't have very reliable maps of the area except for the course descriptions. We ask a few volunteers where there might be a gas station nearby -- they don't know. They don't know because no one lives in these areas. The volunteers all probably live in Portland. The plan is to just keep driving down the course until we find a place with gas, so we overshoot a few of our transition areas and finally find a gas station about 5 miles after we've expected to run out of gas. Problem averted. We head back down the course to transition area 30. Unfortunately (and as mentioned earlier) cell phone service left us around leg 21, so our 2 vans will never have communication with each other again until we near the last 2 or 3 legs.

The gas situation took about 30 minutes of rest away from this interval of down-time, so we're not quite as relaxed as we should be. The lack of sleep is slowly starting to affect each of us in different ways...I get a little loopy, others get shorter fuses, some people just sleep. It's mid- to late- morning now in the Oregon wilderness, and the scene is similar to that of an outdoor camping festival, except all of the attendees are terribly fit. Vans are parked everyone, people are sleeping in the grass, in sleeping bags, tossing frisbees, waiting in a huge line for the bathrooms ("Honey Buckets"), or following the action at the transition area. There's a long line of backed up vans coming into this TA, and a line of backed up vans leaving the TA. We're constantly worried that Lorne will arrive before the 1st van will. The Bucknell team featuring our FF teammate Greg goes flying by, they'll end up 2nd overall. A few other teams come through, and we're trying to figure out what place we're in and how close we are to any competitors. Eventually Ricky and Ryan come into view, and are telling us about some of the amazing splits Van 1 has dropped on their 3rd legs. We're getting excited, hearing about Ricky's last 3 miles that were all under 5:00. He reportedly finished his leg, let out a few expletives, shouted, "THAT'S how you run 5 minute pace!" and puked in a garbage can. The stuff of legends. Cyrus is all warmed up and ready to make his last effort on a swollen foot and a damaged wing. Lorne comes barreling into sight like a man on a mission, and just like that Van 1 is finished and we've got the torch for the last 6 legs of the race. Greeting and Goodbyes are issued with Van 1 and we'll see them again at the finish line.

The sun is out in full force, there aren't any clouds in the sky by now. The van keeps telling us its only in the 70's outside but it feels like the low 80s. If there's shade on your legs here you're among the lucky ones. Cyrus puts in his 3rd excellent leg, and Hiatt is on the course. He claims to have caught somewhere around 38 teams on his leg and to have not gotten passed by one runner on all 3 legs. Solid work for the damaged man. Hiatt's leg is a long one, around 7 miles, with some significant long hills. He passed team BooCoo on his leg, a good days work for Angry Jon. Tim finishes his leg and says it felt like he was running over 7-minute pace, he felt so bad. I'm getting pretty nervous at this point. Team BooCoo got us back on Tim's leg, but Rob's confident he and Dan are going to catch them. The Bucknell Fossils Team is still a few minutes ahead of us, we're not sure if they're within reach or not. Rob absolutely hammers his leg, and D-Train saddles up for his 7+ mile leg 35.

When we assigned legs everyone was assigned except Dan and myself, and runners #11 and #12. With leg 35 being significantly longer we gave that one to Dan having more confidence in his ability to put together a solid long run after 2 quality legs earlier. He certainly doesn't disappoint. We're waiting in the last transition area, and I'm literally unable to sit still, ready to run and ready to go all-out for the team on my last leg. A runner comes into view who looks EXACTLY like Dan, about 3 minutes ahead of schedule and we're shocked. He's wearing black shorts, a white hat just like Dan's Ironman Hat, sunglasses, and has a solid build. We're all freaking out at how fast he ran until we realize it's not really Dan. Just about a minute later the real thing comes into view. He puts in a quality kick and I'm off.

Leg 3 recap (as you guessed, also written shortly after finishing leg 3)
It's listed on the course map as 5.8 miles, but the general consensus is that it's really only 5.2. I've studied this leg since the day we determined I was our anchor. 1.8 miles of climbing, followed by 2 miles of significant downhill, finishing with anywhere from 2.4 - 3.0 miles on the flat Oceanside property in Seaside. D-Train brings in the baton and I take off up the climb. I'm trying to hold back on the ascent so I'll have something to work with on the last flat part. I haven't paid attention to where any of the other teams are - BooCoo, The Fossils, 12 Inches, or even the Santini Olives (previously mentioned girl who broke me on the first leg). I'm passing slower teams on the climb at which point the van passes and yells that "I've got a solid lead on BooCoo and I'm holding it!Â" Awesome! I assume that the BooCoo runner is 10 yards behind me for the rest of the leg so I never let up on the climb. I finish the ascent and look at my watch - I'm only a mile into leg #36 - apparently the missing mile on this leg is in the beginning. My optimism soars and I know I now have just over 4 miles downhill to the finish. I decide to go for broke and see how hard I can push the descent. Around 2 miles there's a wide turn and I have a chance to look back and see if anyone's chasing me. I can see for over 600 yards and the blue jersey of BooCoo is nowhere to be seen. Looking ahead, I can see a solid runner in red shorts and a white jersey, the Bucknell Fossil uniform. There's no way he can be within my sights, I think. In high school I used to have a racing tactic where I'd start counting the seconds when my prey passed a landmark until I passed the same landmark - just repeating the process over and over as I chipped away at his lead. The first time, he's at least 90 seconds up on me with just over 3 to go. To my knowledge we haven't been within 6 minutes of the Fossils since around leg 12. It's on. I'm running recklessly downhill, flying by the slower runners. I've quit keeping track of how many teams I've passed and instead have narrowed the mission to simply catching the Fossils. The descent ends and we've got 2 miles of flat terrain to the beach. His lead is down to 45 seconds. We cross an overpass and I've trimmed his advantage to 20 seconds. We run by Team BooCoo, who has just parked their van, and they're shocked to see that the skinny kid with the Mohawk is about to pass the Fossils. Immediately after this we round a 90 degree turn and the Fossil turns back to see if anyone's chasing him. There's a noticeable double-take when he sees me and there's a visible change in his stride. He's not about to go down without a fight. We round the turn to the boardwalk and he's got 7 seconds on me, both of us not about to let up with the efforts of 11 other runners and 196.5 miles behind us on the Oregon roads. There's tourists walking down the boardwalk and we're flying past them. I can see the blue and white balloons flying ahead on the beach. The crowds are getting larger and they're getting louder. I'm within 15 yards of him and we've got less than 100m to run. I see Van 1 cheering along the edge of the course and I throw in one last surge as a last ditch attempt to edge him at the line. He beats me to the right turn and to both of our surprise we run over the timing mats for the official finish line. The parade finish is another 45 yards down on the sand, and we keep racing to the line. I'm about to pull even with him when the race directors start yelling, "NO! Stop running! Wait for your team to run across the line with you!" Apparently the real finish was 20 yards ago despite our willingness to race on the sand to fake finish line. As it would stand, the Fossils finished 10th in 19:26:58, WMDs-Unleashed came across in 11th with a 19:27:00.

The "parade" finish is there so your whole team can run across the finish line together. Of course (as always), Van 2 is nowhere to be found. I cross the line with Van 1 and we wait 5-6 minutes for the rest of Van 2 to arrive. We tell them how close we finished, we get our team picture taken, we take a dip in the ocean and have a celebratory beer on the beach. I couldn't get more than 2 sips down without feeling sick. My legs are shot, my stomach is a mess, but somewhere in the last 20 hours I figured out how to race again, and our team had an absolute blast. We're coming back next year and we've got about 30 minutes we'd like to drop off our time.

Over the next couple of days we stayed in the house in Manzanita, drove back to Seaside to check out the bars, I got pulled over for driving without headlights, we hit up the Nike Employee store, I cut my mohawk off, I ran in the Pacific Ocean, we had a feast of a bbq, drank a fair share of beers, and reluctantly flew back to Chicago to pick up where our lives had left off. Excellent vacation, great race, good friends and better teammates.