It was another successful Hood-to-Coast this year! This was my 3rd time participating in the relay, the 2nd year with my company team, and my first time as team captain. Thankfully, thinks went really smooth and better than expected. There were no injuries, no one got lost, no one cried (that I know of), and there were tons of tired smiles at the beach in Seaside. I, personally, went into the event on the under trained side of things. But that seems to be the theme for me this year. I would hate to break my streak, you know.
My legs:
Leg 6 - ranked hard, 7.42 miles
Leg 18 - ranked hard, 4.15 miles
Leg 30 - ranked moderate, 5.35 miles
Total mileage = 16.92 miles
Trying to stuff everything into the van at 05:30. And we had a HUGE van!
Van 1 runners at Timberline, getting ready to start the relay.
Kicking off the relay with an 08:45 start time.
First leg
7.42 miles, 01:19:00, 10:39/mile
(*times are from my watch b/c I'm too lazy to look up the official times from our team score sheet)
This leg was ranked as difficult, although I think it was one of the easier ones I've ran so far. The mileage is high, but the terrain is moderate. There are 2 or 3 slight hills, but there is an overall elevation decrease. The bummer about this leg is that it is entirely along Highway 26 in the bike lane, with tons of loud traffic and semi-trucks buzzing by. However, it was fun to run through the town of Sandy and wave to the confused onlookers, wondering what the heck was going on with all of these crazy runners and decorated vans.
Somewhere on my first leg. I think I'm coming into Sandy here.
Second leg
4.15 miles, 00:47, 11:20/mile
This was my "night-time run". It was just before 1:00 am and I was jazzed up on one of those enormous canned Starbucks drinks. Which was great while I was running, but not so great when I was done and it was time for our van to sleep at an exchange station. I stargazed for about 4 hours, slept for about 20 minutes, and then it was time to hit the road again. Awesomeness. But back to the run...
Even though I was over-caffeinated, I ran much slower than anticipated. I chalk that up to a couple of things. One, this leg was entirely uphill. It wasn't steep, but it was all uphill. All of it. Second, I dropped my flashlight (turned off at the time) into the bushes and had to get on my hands and knees and scrounge through the brush for it. That was fun. All-in-all, not my favorite leg so far.
Our luxurious accommodations between legs 2 and 3.
Third leg
5.35 miles, 00:55, 10:17/mile
As you get closer to Seaside, traffic becomes an utter nightmare. Which means that sometimes, the runner beats the van to the next exchange station. Which means that the next runner gets to hop out of the van early, and run ahead. Lucky me, I got to tack on an extra half mile or mile ahead of my last run. It turned out to be a great warm-up though!
I was on a mission here. A mission to finish and drink beer. Sometimes, beer is the ultimate motivator. This was one of those times. I hauled as fast as I could, which admittedly is not very fast, and finished up my third leg with my best pace of the weekend. It's sweet to end on a high note.
A sampling of the views from our third legs. I LOVE costumes. I wish we had costumes!
Team RFB crossing the finish line in Seaside!
We had an agreement that what happens in the van, stays in the van. So I'll skip over all of the fun details, and just say that we had another awesome year. And just like before, my cheeks were far more sore than my legs. Which means that everything went just as it should have!
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