2022 Hood to Coast Recap and Takeaways
Its a wrap! Another Hood to Coast in the books. These things always tend to sneak up on me and every year, the race finds a way to make things interesting.
For those unfamiliar, its basically a 200 mile relay race starting from Timberline Lodge at Mt Hood, all the way down to the beach in Seaside, Oregon. There are 12 runners divided into two vans and for next ~36 continuous hours, there is a team member on the road making their way down to the coast. When one van finishes 6 legs, they find a spot to rest/sleep then meet up with the other van 6 legs later, continuing the process until both vans are at the beach.
In recent years I've been taking running much more seriously -- putting in the requisite amount of miles in order to improve, strength training, educating myself on the different modes of running that gives me the most bang for my buck, improvements wise. (I can get into those modalities in a separate post.)
Conversely, I've also been putting Hood to Coast on the back burner. Its basically a 200 mile fun run where people dress up and decorate their vans with random pun names (e.g. a team name might be "Make America Chafe Again"). The spectacle of it is just as important as the actual running. I describe it to friends as a "slow moving comic con." Myself, included. We have a Star Wars theme and I encourage my team to dress up. Our team name is "This is the Way" I have a Mandalorian hoodie and we draw baby yodas on our van and give each other Star Wars radio call signs such as "Razor Crest" and "Red 5."
Its a great jumping in point for casuals to get excited about running and start taking it up seriously. I loved it in 2017 when I started taking running more seriously and now I have a few marathons under my belt.
5 years and 4 Hood to Coast finishes later (2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic), I return to the mountain again as a team captain and an elder statesmen. I'm more worried about my runners than I am about finishing whatever legs in a certain time.
Get my section of course wrapped up, sleep, repeat two more times, fart around at Seaside for a few hours, take a big group picture, then head home. At least that was the plan.
A week before the race, two runners drop. 4 days later, another runner drops. We manage to find one backup runner, but we're still short 2 runners. Instead of 3 legs per runner, we're faced with asking multiple runners to run extra legs.
6 of our runners are either casual runners or essentially untrained for ~18 miles of running over two days, so it wouldn't be fair to ask them to do more than what we originally planned. I wanted them to have fun, and more importantly, stay safe and injury free. Some of my runners were kids and I needed to allay the concerns and fears of their parents.
The other 4 of us, the veterans ended up divvying up the extra legs. It involved stealing a runner from Van 2 to wrap up our legs for Van 1 during the first part, shuffling runners around so that the veterans can run extra legs, and finally myself jumping from Van 1 to Van 2 at the last section of course in order to wrap things up.
I ended up running 29 miles over 5 Legs -- almost double the
amount of miles of what a normal runner would do. The last few miles
of the 5th leg were not pretty. It had gotten warm, it was a 7 mile leg up
a gravel access road, there was little shade, and I didn't think to bring water. I found myself questioning my life decisions at around mile 6. I bonked pretty hard and limped into exchange 36.
Some takeaways from this last race
1) Fielding a team of 12 runners and having them show up at the starting line is the *REAL* challenge. The running, driving, the money -- those all end up taking care of themselves. We had a solid number of backup runners (3+) and we STILL had close to 50% turnover by the time we got to race day. The late notice meant that a lot of the backup runners already made plans for other things that weekend.
Until all 12 people show up, plan on running extra legs.
2) My van had 3 young guys in their 20s. They flew down the downhill sections. I am almost 40 and had no business trying to match their paces. Especially since I potentially was going to do double the amount of mileage. Had I gassed out or gotten injured on any of the legs, that would have totally left the team out to dry.
If I have to run extra legs again, I'm just going to keep my effort at 60%-70% and not worry too much about pushing the pace. Essentially pace the entire thing like its a marathon. If I'm still fresh and the spirit moves me on the last half of the last leg, THEN maybe I'll kick. The burnout or injury risk is too great if I attempt anything sooner than that.
3) I learned to set my ego aside and ask for help. The ego boost from being the super hero and doing EVERYTHING is a huge recipe for burnout. Had I not said anything and tried to do everything, I would have been a lot grumpier and my van would not have had fun.
Communicating my needs and asking for help when I needed it allowed my teammates to step up in a HUGE way. Sometimes it was small things like asking someone to take the wheel and drive the van for a little bit so I could sleep for just a few extra minutes. When some runners dropped, I let the team know right away and they were able to tap into their contacts and we ended up finding an extra runner or two when we needed it. I emailed the team the team expenses and everyone was able to pitch in so the financial burden for incidental racing costs wouldn't fall completely on me.
All in all, our team finished in about 34 hours. Despite missing 2
runners, we met our projected time. Some of the newer runners stepped up
and volunteered to run extra, no one complained, and we found a way to
get it done. Couldn't have been prouder of my team. I have a few months before I even have to think about assembling together another team. For now, I just gotta savor the win, and get back to my training for the next event.
