In January I was contacted by a friend at work (Stacy Bacilek) asking what I knew about the 197-mile Hood-To-Coast Relay race, “the mother of all relays”. It starts from about 6,000ft up the nearly 11,300ft tall Mount Hood and goes all the way down to the Oregon coast in the town of Seaside. I knew a few people that have done it. Turns out that Stacy had gained entry in to the relay. Only problem was: she didn’t have a team! Stacy was calling to ask if I was interested in getting my piece of the fun and I jumped at the chance to join the STL Coasters.
Lauren volunteered to drive, as had Greg, husband of STL Coaster teammate Samantha (Sam) Rhodes. This was the makings of a great trip! Stacy went on a recruiting spree for the next several months and our roster jostled around a bit until about early July. In July we settled commitments from runners on a final roster. In the end, we were entering a 12-person team that included:
Holly, Bert, Sam, Mary, JJ, Colleen, Kathy, Jason (ME!), Stacy, John, Don, and Elyse – a MOTLEY CREW to be sure.
The order of names here is the order in which our runners were relaying – Holly started. We had assembled friends from St. Louis & Pittsburg to create the team. We split up in to two vans so that our first 6 runners would be in Van 1 and me and the others were in Van 2.
We all met on Mount Hood Wednesday & Thursday of race week. The race is a
Friday staggered start and the STL Coasters were scheduled for 2pm. At 2pm on the nose Holly took off down Mount Hood to run the difficult & sharp downhill leg #1. Coasters were rolling! WOOT WOOT!
Weather was PERFECT for this year’s relay and the cooler temps were a treat to run in (about 70 degrees max, with overnight lows that got chilly at times). The Midwest had been experiencing a lot of HEAT & HUMIDITY over the last couple of months, so this was nice break.
As runner #8, I didn’t get the chance to run until 7:30pm, which was nearly 42 miles & 5.5 hours in to the course. It was tons of fun watching all the
mayhem of thousands of runners, some even in costumes, work their way down the mountain towards Seaside, Oregon. As Van 1 updated us on their progress I was Tweeting, texting & updating Facebook the STL Coasters status. Pretty cool that we had good cell service (at least on the 1st half of the course) to connect the laptop – Van 2 had become MOBILECOM HOMEBASE. It was like a rolling, camping, WiFi hotspot!
Hood-To-Coast is like a downhill rolling party. There are HILARIOUS team names & themes. There are also unforgettable costumes – like the pair of dudes in fake women’s body blow up suits with lingerie on. The dudes were running in ridiculous inflatable outfits. CLASSIC!
I was on the hook for 3 legs (#’s 8, 20 & 32) – a total of 14.39 miles. I managed some respectable times on my legs, especially leg #20, which is arguably the most difficult on the course. If my math is right, it’s a 5.75 mile leg that climbs about 1,000ft! There is a short & fast downhill about half way up the leg, but then you’re smacked in the face with another climb to the end of the leg. BRUTAL (but fun) considering I took on Leg 20 at 4:45 in the morning.
My results looked like this:
#8 – 4.55 miles, averaged 6:17/mile (easy leg, with a few rolling hills)
#20 – 5.75 miles, averaged 7:08/mile (VERY difficult leg, 1,000ft of climb, DUSTY dirt road most of the way)
#32 – 4.09 miles, averaged 6:21/mile (moderate difficulty, a few large rolling hills)
Total: 14.39 miles at an average of 6:39/mile – I’ll take it!
Some teammates carried MUCH heavier loads than I did. While I did get about the toughest climb in the race, Stacy ran the most mileage with almost 20 miles! She averaged a phenomenal 9:05/mile!!! Don wins the Coasters Sandbagger award. He kept telling us how “slow” he was going to be. Don knocked out almost 16 miles at an average pace of 8:12/mile – just outstanding! I think JJ won the Coaster “Lunch Loser” award for nearly puking on his first & last leg, and DEFINITELY puking on his second. Maybe JJ should have joined the team “Puke & Rally”, who were on the course near us for much of the race?
A few STL Coaster Team Fun Facts & Stats:
Speedy Dudes & Dudettes – averages were7:22/mile for the boys, 8:59/mile for the girls.
The long haul - The Ladies DEFINITELY carried the workload in terms of mileage – the men ran 82 miles while the ladies combined efforts for a whopping 115 miles – whoa!
Van comparisons are interesting, too. Van 1 (Driven by Cap’n Greg) was QUICK at 8:09/mile – whew! Van 2 (Driven by Admiral Lauren) managed a highly respectable 8:28/mile. Van 1 teamed up for 97.66 miles, while Van 2 mowed down 99.04 miles.
I think everyone on the Coasters did better than they expected of themselves. It was a competitive bunch in the sense that everyone REALLY wanted to run their best for the team. We were projected (by the Hood-To-Coast computer) to finish in about 28.5 or 29 hours, but we smoked that, finishing in 27hrs 15mins!!! Elyse cruised on to the beach at 5:15pm on Saturday in GORGEOUS Seaside, Oregon. The place was teeming with runners, food & beer vendors, and your general partiers. It’s a blast of a scene!
All we STL Coaster runners & crew (including Lauren, Matt, Ric, & Greg) gathered with Elyse to run across the finish line in the sand together. It was an awesome experience. Elyse snagged our finisher medals and graciously awarded each team member with their prize…
A few of my personal “Highlight Experiences” of 2010 Hood-To-Coast:
· The smell of the Toyota Sienna (Van 2) after 25+ hours of 6 sweaty runners living in it
· Achievement of “Mother Ship” Status for Van 2 Toyota Sienna & “Communications Commander” for myself – we were loaded with mobile WiFi, 4 phone chargers, laptop, TweetDeck, Facebook, Dailymile, Internet, Email, texting, on-line banking/shopping & much, much more!
· Sleeping on a high school gym floor at 2am with 200 of my “closest running friends” for a mere (and precious) 1 hour of sleep, while snorey-mcsnorerton sawed logs over in the corner, idiots rolled tons of luggage across the wood gym floor, and some jerk talked on their cell phone for 20 minutes
· Lauren, as driver of Van 2, is replaced by a random parakeet – WTF?!?
· 
4am cheeseburger run at the McDonalds drive through!
· JJ – I mean C’MON, the guy ran so hard he PUKED!
· Climbing 1,000ft in 5.75 miles at 4:45am with less than 1hr of sleep at 7:08/mile
· The “Top Gun” themed team vans, including loud-speaker karaoke setup from which “Goose” & “Maverick” were continually singing “You’ve lost that loving feeling” – LIVE!
· Being finished with my 3rd & final leg so I could drink beer (not that I waited until I was finished) – whew!
Kathy’s “mishap” of walking in to a DISGUSTING Honey Bucket (port-a-potty) near the finish line in bare feet!
Arriving at the beach for the finish & sharing some food & COLD brews with fellow STL Coasters & Crew!
As for the event, it’s extremely well organized and a hell of a lot of fun to run. Aside from some runner & traffic congestion on legs 31 & 32, it ran like a well-oiled machine. Unfortunately, it’s not cheap to participate in due to the van rentals, self-supported food/hydration supplies & travel costs. However, if you can ever spare the money & make the time to go, you won’t be sorry! The volunteers at H2C are as good as or better than ANY I’ve ever raced around – thank you Vollies! And the party at the finish – EXCELLENT!
Coasters: Thank you, AWESOME job and I had a COMPLETE BLAST! It’s definitely an experience I will never forget and goes down as one of my favorite of all-time running trips.
