Hood 2 Coast Relay, Oregon, USA

Well folk’s where do I start?

At the beginning of the year, I was offered the chance to compete as part of a Sweatshop UK team, in the Hood to Coast relay. So on Tuesday the 21^st August off we flew to Oregon via Chicago.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with this World Famous Race, (OK, I’d never heard of it either!), it is a 36 leg relay, starting at Mount Hood, Oregon, (elevation just under 12,000ft), and snaking its way through some really spectacular countryside, to your final destination of Seaside, (yes, the town is really called that!). Teams are made up of 12 members, each running 3 legs which vary greatly in distance and severity!

We had a two van set-up, with runners 1-6 in the 1^st van and 7-12 in the 2^nd. The first leg drops you from the start at the Timberline Lodge, approx 6,000ft, to about 3,845ft, a drop of just under 2,200ft in 6 miles!!! Thankfully, I was doing legs 7, 19 and 31, which were 5.65, 5.90 and 4.10 miles respectively. The severity was awarded from easy, moderate, hard and very hard! This I translated into flattish, testing, (my last leg), that was tough (my 1^st leg), and you’re having a laugh!! (My 2^nd leg).

The race started at 12 midday on the Friday, with the slowest teams off first, each team being graded and going off every 15 minutes in groups of 25. We were due to go off at 7.15pm so it was quite a wait, from brekky to our first runner going off, but even longer for me.

My leg was due to start at 11.50ish. Head torch and high Vis vest in place, I made my way to the change over point. Despite the time of night, it was very busy. I heard our number over the clamour, spotted my team mate, felt the snap of the snap band on my wrist, and then I was off! 5.65 miles, just before midnight, down pitch black, country lanes in Oregon in the US of A!

I thought to myself, “Pinch yourself John”, but I was there and I was part of it. As I said previously, the leg was graded hard; I plodded on into the night, passing very upbeat marshal’s, who all shouted, ‘way to go’ and ‘awesome dude!’ (Yes! by the end of the event it did grate). Undulating is a word commonly used by race organisers who don’t want to frighten runners away from their race, when what they really mean is its bl**dy lumpy! This first leg was UNDULATING! Anyhow, before I knew it, I was coming to the change over point; I snapped the band onto our next runner and away he went. “That was tough,” I remarked to our time keeper. “Not surprised,” he replied. “You knocked nearly three minutes of your estimated time!” I was chuffed!

We made our way along the route, dropping off eager, fresh runners and picking up tired but elated ones, until it was our time to transfer over to Runner 1 again and chance, (slim), for our van to get a kip. We drove to the next change over point, which was a large field, called showground, (say it as it is!), and pulled out the sleeping bags. Just to put the record straight, I am useless at sleeping when travelling, and although theoretically we had stopped moving, my brain was still in ‘You’re travelling’ mode. Fortunately though, sleep depravation won over for a short time and with about an hour and twenty minutes sleep in me, and at approximately 6.30am I stepped up to the change over point for my second leg.

This particular run was graded as very hard, and it wasn’t long before I found out why! It started on a slight uphill, then went hard down, then hard up, then hard down, then hard up, then……… You get my drift! 5.9mls of that later and I was at the change over…..ABSOLUTELY CREAM CRACKERED! Yet again though I was informed I’d done a bit better than expected, (just over 4 mins), so got back into the van feeling slightly better than when I left it.

For the rest of the morning we steadily made our way towards the coast, constantly picking up time along the way, until it was time for my final leg. It was about 3pm in the afternoon; I’d had about 1hour and 20mins sleep since 8am the previous morning and I had just over 4 miles to run. The sun had come out from behind the clouds that had been hanging around all day, so I thought, right, VEST, PORN STAR SHORTS, let’s go for it!! So I huffed and puffed for just over 30mins and pulled out my best overall pace!!! We arrived at the finish line 197 miles from the start, in 23hours and 18 mins, which was 45 mins faster than predicted and 84th out of 1034 finishing teams.

The entry fee for this event is about $1000 per team, which if you split it between 12 isn’t too pricey. If you tag on to this at least one van hire, plus accommodation for a week, it works out quite expensive, but the experience was PRICELESS!!!!.

Written by: John Rudd.

Submitted: 14^th September 2007

Edited by: Brenda J Earnshaw WRR Editor