President Bush also chose to arrive in Portland on Thursday, which wouldn’t have helped anyone arriving at the airport on Thursday. We predicted delays on the roads, but didn’t predict Jennifer getting sprayed with tear gas making her way to the hotel, past the demonstrations.

Race Day
The first job on Race Day is decorating the vans. At this point we started to wonder whether the Prison Love Experience would make it to the start without getting arrested. Pity the poor driver having to explain some of those graphics to their children!

Lions & Flyers & Bears’ van 1 was a bit slow off the mark with the decorations. Partly because the deodorant stick we were using to write graffiti wasn’t showing up too well on the windows. Then we found out that the others were using white shoe polish. Oh well, ours would have looked good if it had rained!

At around 11:30am we started the journey out to Mount Hood. After a while Richard Garland pointed out where we were joining the race route. We got the course notes out as we drove backwards over part of leg 7, then leg 6. Then we got to leg 5, which was mine. From the van’s point of view this seemed like a never-ending descent, the road winding around and down into the distance. That meant that I would have to run back up it! Oh dear. Each of us in Van 1 got to sympathise with each other’s legs. At some point we started to see runners coming in the opposite direction, and the atmosphere picked up. It’s difficult to tell, but it’s quite likely we passed some of these teams, even though we weren’t due to start for another 3 hours and they’d been under way that long already.

At this point I should describe some of the race logistics for those who haven’t done it before. The race covers 197 miles from a point half way up Mount Hood (where the road ends. Or starts, depending on which way you look at it) to the beach at Seaside. The distance is split into 36 legs of between 3.75 and 7.3 miles. Each team has 12 runners who run in the same order, going through the rotation 3 times. The first 6 runners are in Van 1, and while a runner is on the road, their van acts as back up, meeting them at agreed points with water, or whatever drink they’d like to have. (Beer isn’t permitted, but I didn’t see anyone checking). Van 2 waits at the start of leg 7 and takes over, while Van 1’s smelly occupants go for a shower, or a sleep in the back of the van, depending what stage they are at. And so on. The teams are seeded so that the slower teams start earlier in the day on the Friday morning. The first runners set off at 9am, and 20 teams start every 15 minutes throughout the day until the elite runners go off at around 8pm. All three Flyer teams were seeded in the middle of the pack, and all started at the same time, at 3pm.

Leg 1 is 5.45 miles of continuous, steep, downhill. (One woman was running leg 1 for the 5th or 6th time. She had a very light stride and looked like the gradient didn’t affect her at all). Several of us were quite concerned about Dana, who was running this leg. She had been having some fairly severe back spasms over the previous two weeks, she’d been struggling to train, and her doctor had told her not to run (“Yeah, right!”). We really thought she could do herself some harm, but she was on her way, along with Torsten and Janske. Janske’s long stride took her out to an early lead by the halfway point, but by the time they approached the first changeover point Torsten was back with her. Just before they reached the exchange zone they held hands and ran towards it together in a display of solidarity and friendship. Except that Torsten confessed later that he was tired and grabbed Janske’s hand so that she couldn’t outsprint him to the line! Dana came in a couple of minutes behind, highly annoyed at herself for having eaten lunch just before the start, but she held on to it (her lunch, that is), and also pronounced her back cured! And her quads destroyed!

In the meantime, Janske passed the bracelet over to Janet, but Janet didn’t stand a chance when Bill took over from Torsten and stormed off like the proverbial bat out of hell. Richard took over from Dana. About three miles into the second leg I was Richard’s water helper. I met him 50 yards or so from the van and jogged along with him while he drank. The weather was noticably hotter. “How far ahead is Janet?” he asked. I had absolutely no idea. “Oh, about 2 minutes” I said, confidently. We drove on, passing a well-defined, shirtless (male) runner from team 149, who caused lots of excitement among the three girls in the van as they pressed their noses against the windows. Jim and I, intimidated by the sudden explosion of oestrogen, just kept our heads down.

The teams held these positions for the next couple of legs, and the leg 3 and 4 runners had to cope with the hottest weather of the day.

The next changeover was mine. OK, that is a selfish point of view: it was also Vicky’s and Steve’s, but I’m writing this and I was getting excited to be finally running. (Yes, and I’m sure Vicky & Steve were too). Cassie and Paul had kept up the lead that Bill had given them with his storming 2nd leg, and so Vicky was away first. Joe appeared to have made up some ground however, and so it wasn’t all that long before Steve was off. I knew I would be the last to get going, but I was hoping to be close enough to be able to try to catch the others. I’d been concerned about the heat and was drinking Gatorade and trying to stand in peoples’ shadows so as not to burn or dehydrate. The sun was still high and felt quite intense. Then our team number was called and Ginny was on her way in. I stepped into the exchange zone and held my hand out for the wristband. Just as Ginny was about to reach out to put the band on my wrist, someone stood in front of me: “You can’t run like that. Where’s your vest?” “Excuse me?” “You can’t run this leg without your reflective vest and flashlight.” “You’re joking, right?” By this time Ginny was past me and wondering what was going on. Jim ran up and pushed me towards her, shouting “She’s over there!” “No I’m not joking, you need your vest and flashlight,” continued the official. “Well that is just F*****G RIDICULOUS! How long have I been standing there and you decide to mention this NOW? F*****G BRILLIANT!!!”

By this time I had remembered the rule about 60 minute penalties for abusing officials, but also the fact that my vest and flashlight were in the bottom of my bag, which was in the van, which was locked, and about 300 yards away.

Dana figured out what was going on and volunteered to go back to the van for the first vest & flashlight she could find. But first she had to find who had the key to the van.

I took the wristband off Ginny, who thought I was mad at her for not running fast enough (I reassured her on that point later). I turned around and saw that someone (I think it was another official) was looking somewhat shocked. I almost felt contrite for a moment, but then remembered that I was standing around while other runners were passing me.

“I don’t f*****g believe this! It’s about 90 f*****g degrees, I’ve been trying to find some f*****g shade for the last 20 minutes right in front of you, and now you tell me I need a f*****g flashlight! Fantastic!” It was too late to worry about penalties now, and I was furious. A couple of minutes later, Dana ran over with a vest, which I put on; then she handed me a flashlight. Except she’d picked up a camera by mistake! She ran off back to the van to get a flashlight. I probably muttered a few more obscenities at the officials after that, while I stood by and more and more runners went past. After a total delay of several minutes, Dana came back with a flashlight and I was off. I was so uptight about this that I had to focus really hard to not go off like a greyhound out of a trap. The fact that I had to hold myself back just served to make me even more frustrated, if that was possible, but the last 3 miles of this run were all uphill, so I had to save something. Come to think of it, I would have to save something to run 6 miles anyway.

A couple of miles into this leg, one of the official race photographers caught me in action: a family of spectators relaxing in the sun in the background wearing shorts and t-shirts, me with sunglasses, and bright sunlight glinting off my flashlight! And with a face like thunder!

About 3 miles in, the Sheriff’s department had set up an impromptu roadblock and was diverting runners off the main road and onto a quiet country lane to the right. I started to suspect that I wasn’t going to get my Gatorade. The good thing was that being on this tree-lined lane with no traffic relaxed me a bit, even though this section was almost all uphill. I even managed to exchange pleasantries with a couple of roadkill on this section (some of whom weren’t wearing reflective vests!). [Note: ‘roadkill’ is Hood-to-Coast-speak for passed runners]. I think I had 5 or 6 roadkills on this leg, but I forgot to count in the first couple of miles. Most of them probably ran past me while I was waiting for permission to start anyway. In the meantime, the others were waiting patiently for me at the agreed spot to give me some Gatorade. After a while they noticed that no runners were coming through at all. One allegedly hair-raising U-turn later they were told that vans weren’t allowed on the detour, so they had to rush back up the hill on the main highway to the changeover point, just in time to meet me. (This became a pattern – for a variety of reasons Jim only just made it ahead of me every time!).

[I’m not sure why I wasn’t penalised: maybe no one understood my accent. Three other teams were penalised for abusing officials, and another was disqualified altogether for ‘Public Nuisance’!]

Jim took off on his leg, which was the 3rd longest of the whole race at just over 7 miles, and I dried off and apologised for upsetting Ginny. I have to admit to not knowing much about leg 6. The changeover at the end was fairly chaotic, though. This was where Van 2 takes over from Van 1, and so there are twice as many people there as at the other changeover areas, plus there were plenty of spectators, as this one was outside a mini shopping mall in the town of Sandy. I think the other two teams had already gone by the time we got there. We did see some of the other Flyers by the vans though, and we got to see Jim hand over to David, who took off at what must have been 5:00 mile pace. Then we handed over the timekeeping sheets to Ed, wished everyone good luck, and headed back to the hotel in Portland for a shower and, hopefully, some sleep.

The sleeping arrangements for all 3 teams seemed like they were fairly uniform, although it wasn’t planned that way, in that the women all slept on the beds and the men all slept on the floor. Certainly that was how our room ended up (except without the ‘sleep’ bit), and another female Flyer from one of the other teams (we have an agreement that any gossip stays in Oregon, so I will use a cunning anagram of her name, Aym), was heard to complain: “This isn’t fair! I thought I was going to bed with two guys tonight and I end up sleeping with another woman!”

Just as everyone was drifting into sleep, Richard’s cellphone rang. This was Ed with the warning that we had about an hour to get to the 13th changeover. It was 11:30pm.

While all this had been going on, there were other battles being fought amongst the Van 2 In particular, Robert Butler (our LA-based Flyer) had some mind games going on with his friend and NY running partner David Dietz. In round one of this particular battle (staged on leg 7), Robert came out on top, thanks to the lead given him by his Manhattan On The Rocks teammates, and despite the fact that David appeared to win the psychological battle, although he was concerned whether the lead would be big enough each time he came to an uphill section. The pressure was that much greater knowing he had to protect his lead for his team.

The leg 13 changeover was one of several surreal scenes in this race. It was midnight and we were in an industrial area just near downtown Portland, together with hundreds of other people. Every few seconds a runner or group of runners would come past and disappear into the night with their flashlights. Also at this point, a rumour started to circulate that one of our team, Ken, had torn a hamstring. This was obviously not good, not least as he was one of our star runners and vital in the balance of keeping us close to the other teams, but also because tearing a hamstring is, well, bad.

We’d been well behind the other two teams when we’d handed over to Van 2 around 4 hours earlier, so we were quite pleasantly surprised, especially after the reports of Ken’s demise, to find that the three teams were closely bunched together again. Lene was first to hand off to Janske, who didn’t look like she was going to be caught. A minute or two later Becca handed the Prison Love wristband over to Torsten, with Dana taking over from Gina not long after. There were no position changes, despite the proximity. Dana, who lived in Portland for four years, took a wrong turn and ended up on the main road instead of running through the park. It wasn’t a huge mistake, but it would have saved her the following conversation with a passing motorist: “Hey, are you doing Hood To Coast?” “Yes.” “How far behind are you?”

For some reason, people were giving away big packs of toilet paper from the back of a tractor-trailer at the end of this leg.

Joanne was starting to get very nervous at this point. She hadn’t been running very long when she was talked into entering this race, and now, at 2am and the next runner up, she was running low on confidence. She needn’t have worried though: once she got started she loved it. We could see the enthusiasm when she finished.

I don’t remember much about these legs. It was dark, we were in the country, and there were no distinguishing features, and the way the teams were matched up we didn’t see any of the others at this point. I remember that we did have to find a back-up flashlight for Ginny on her leg though. She was going to take on Joanne’s, along with the wristband, but when Joanne came in it had stopped working. Perversely the rules only said that you had to have a flashlight. It didn’t necessarily have to work! Ginny set off in the dark, but we caught her up shortly thereafter with a replacement. That also screwed up her plan of being able to run the whole leg without us bugging her!

My next leg was short at 4.6 miles, pretty flat and at 3:20am pretty cool, too. About 40 yards in, a race marshall told me to cross over to the left hand side of the road. I did as I was told, but immediately his colleague on the opposite side of the road threatened me with a jaywalking ticket. Apparently you’re supposed to wait for the lights to change!

By that time I was already past her, so I kept going. I passed a couple of other crosswalks in the next few yards and wondered if I was supposed to wait for them, too. I didn’t. One of the other Flyers on this leg DID get a jaywalking ticket! Sadly I was too far behind to take advantage. I did have a very successful run in terms of roadkill though: I passed a net 12 in 4.6 miles! You’d be running long in dark solitude, then your flashlight would pick up a hint of a vest ahead, or a passing car would show up a silhouette, and you’d grit your teeth and reel them in.

In some ways this was a more difficult leg than I thought. I ran hard, but in the darkness of the Oregon countryside in the early hours, after a while I had no idea how far I’d run, or how long I’d been running. I decided just to try to keep my pace up. Now I have no illusions about being a fast runner, and I’m used to being overtaken, but I had just passed one runner when I heard footsteps behind me. This didn’t sound like the same guy out for revenge. Then guy in a light blue singlet flew past me like I was standing still! Half the rollerbladers in Central Park don’t get past me as quickly as that! He disappeared from view very quickly. The winning team finished almost 10 hours faster than us, so my guess is that he was one of them.

In the meantime, our van was coming close to getting a ticket. After leaving the changeover area the police had pulled them over for not turning their headlights on. Luckily, Richard avoided the wrong answer, namely: “I’m sorry officer, I’m just so damn tired I don’t know which way is up anymore!” After having his licence checked he was on his way again. Just as well, because the parking area for the next leg was several hundred yards away from the changeover point, and there wasn’t much margin for ticket-writing.

Back on the road, after a while I was feeling that I’d misjudged the pace a bit and could feel my legs getting heavy. I was struggling to keep up the pace, but finally I got to the left turn at the end of the leg. In the darkness I could just make out a couple of figures. One of them had to be Jim, so luckily only one guy reached out for the wristband because it was too dark to tell. I ran a respectable pace, even with the late slowdown, so once I’d got my breath back I was fairly satisfied. After all, I still had another leg to go.

It really was a long walk back to the van. I opened the van door, but Ginny was asleep across the back seat, Joanne was asleep across the middle seat, and Dana had the front seat reclined all the way back to sleep. After I paused, knowing I would be risking my life by asking one of them to move, but also knowing we had to hurry to get to the next change, Ginny sat up and let me on the back seat. It wasn’t long before I was asleep too.

After Jim had finished we drove to the leg 24 changeover. (We were too remote to get to a hotel to sleep or shower). We didn’t take over until leg 25, but there is no mobile phone coverage in this area, and so the only way to hazard a guess at when your teammate is due in is to see tham start. (You’re not really supposed to do this, but no one checked!)

For the most part I stayed in the van. I could see through a gap between vans a steady stream of reflective vests running along the road (this at around 5am!) It did occur to me at this point, after spending the entire 2 hour period since my last run in the back of a van with no chance to stretch, that maybe doing Hood to Coast once would be enough. However, even while I was thinking this, I knew that I’d be back.

The next few legs were a blur (again!). I don’t remember where we lost the lead. I remember waiting to take over for leg 29, and hoping that I would be within catching distance of Vicky and/or Steve, but it wasn’t to be. I chatted with a couple of other runners who were impressed that we’d come over from New York.

Now leg 29 is a formidable thing. After everything else we’d been through over the previous 20 hours or so, 3 poor Flyers had to tackle this. It was 3 ½ miles of continuous climbing, followed by 2 ½ miles of descent (the first and only downhill stretch that the no. 5 runners – Vicky, Steve and your author – did in the entire race!). The climb was relentless. I tried to pace myself carefully. I was trying to visualise a race I used to do in Scotland, where the first two miles consists of a continuous steep climb. In a way it worked, in that I coped with the first two miles reasonably well. The problem was that this hill didn’t stop there. In fact it got steeper!

As well as being tough, this is also regarded as the most scenic leg in the race. I can’t confirm this: I ran most of it with my eyes shut because of all the sweat pouring into them! Every so often I had to open them to make sure I was still at the side of the road, and not running into the oncoming traffic, but ravines, waterfalls, streams? Never saw one!

At sometime on the downhill section I noticed our van out of the corner of my eye, stuck in traffic. On the one hand, this was a good thing: must be near the finish! On the other hand, it was a bad thing: I’m not supposed to pass my own van! It’s supposed to be waiting for me at the finish! Was there going to be anyone there waiting for me at the changeover? This wasn’t the time to worry about that; I just had to keep running.

Once again, Jim got there just in the nick of time, having run ahead of the van, and I was free to spend a few minutes staggering around the change area, waiting for the van to catch up, and trying desperately to recover. This was tough. I ran half of it with my eyes shut. Vicky lost her breakfast. I didn’t hear of any effect on Steve. I’m not sure that anything affects Steve. At least I had the sympathy of the others in the van. Until I had to climb past them, smelling like the creature from the swamp, that is.

After that, it was off to pick up Jim from his leg, then off to Seaside to pick up the keys to the houses, while Van 2 covered the final 32 miles!

We handed over to Van 2 still firmly in last place of the 3 Flyer teams.

The Van 2 runners were obviously having problems with disorientation, and exhaustion-induced paranoia. David Dietz, even though he was on a different team, offered Howard some water as he ran past. In a completely unexpected move Howard ran past David, waving his arms in front of his face, then dropped his shorts before running on. Everyone was a bit nonplussed by this. Howard’s explanation on getting to his own team at a water stop: “They tried to give me fake water, so I mooned the f***ers!”

Howard got his comeuppance a few minutes later, when a committee from the Lions & Flyers & Bears team got out of their van in front of him and gave him a six cheek salute. An earlier, and even more surreal, event involving Howard was during the first rest period at the Portland hotel. Todd, having decided to sleep in the closet (presumably there was no more space in the room, or maybe living at altitude does these things to you), was woken by Howard rummaging around. “What are you looking for?” asked Todd. “Cups” replied Howard. “Howard, there are no cups in the closet!”

Once again, I have very little idea what went on during the last six legs. As you have probably gathered by now, there is much more interaction between the three different Van 1s than between the Van 1s and their respective Van 2 teammates. However I think it was after the very last leg that the Prison Love anchorwoman, Becca (a friend of Todd’s from Denver), on hearing her last 5 mile leg split of 49:23 summed things up nicely with the exclamation: “Holy shit, I've never run two consecutive 11 minute miles, much less 5 consecutive 10 minute miles. Sea level rocks!”

Where we can rejoin the story is at Seaside. Nicely showered, we headed down to the beach to meet up with our Van 2 comrades, so that all 12 of us could cross the finish line together. The 3 sets of Van 1 runners had no idea who would come in when. Our team certainly didn’t hold out much hope, given the lead the others had going into leg 31 and Ken’s injury woes. But Gina was charging down the boardwalk! She still had a few turns to negotiate before getting onto the beach, where the rest of us met her and ran over the line together. Those last few yards in the soft sand were tough! Especially as I wasn’t planning on running for a couple of days after my last leg finished 5 ½ hours earlier. Then it was through a maze of funnels to the official team photograph area. And from there to the beer tent!