Hood to Coast.

I'm starting a new blog to separate my non ultimate stuff, but, in the meantime, just to piss off the ultimatetalk readers who can't stand to read about anything but h-stack...

Tuesday Night I somehow went from 'saturday 30min bike ride' to thursday-sunday, massive Hood to Coast Relay run. Next thing I know, I'm driving the Van over from the Redmond airport (only place the team could get the van). I also somehow drew the long legs/ hard legs of this challenging race. The team was great, the girls were members of a race team in SF (one or two were at the olympic trials kind of deal) and the guys were pretty good. (But, really, the girls were the difference makers).

The team at the start. The race included 1000 teams (plus shorter walking and HS divisions). We were iTeam (reflecting our apple sponsoship). This allowed for some plays on that in the van painting (Putting the i back in Team, there ain't no US in WIN, etc) and allowed for some funny schtick about the merits of selfishness. Two vans of 6 played leapfrog as we went accross the state. You would run a leg, tag off to a van mate, and eventually, the next van would take over, and our van would drive ahead 30-40 miles, and chill out for a while (and wish we could sleep).

I joined up tuesday night, and thursday I ferried a van 3 hours over the mountains. We went to the Kennedy School for dinner, and I must have gotten 2 solid hours of sleep in the hotel. Then we drove BACK 1.5 hours to the start (conceivably I could have slept in my own bed, and driven over, but the team bonding thing was cool, and it was no biggy. We decorated the vans, cheered the start, and then our van went to safeway for lunch (soup and sandwich) and then to hang out at FredMeyers for the exchange (bought a new travel scrabble (which i never used, but my current set is missing a letter)). Finally, the time neared for van ii to start.

Van ii (our van) waiting near the exchange for the start of our first set (of 3). Laura and Karen went first, before handing the baton to me. My first leg was 7 miles (averaged 6:45 pace), before tagging off near dusk. We finished up after our next leg evan ran, tagging off to janet, and then we were done for 3.5 hours.

We made a mild error here, in our effort we went to a hotel to avoid trying to rest at an overcrowded transition area. In hindsight, we should have gone to the tranny, but, c'est la vie. Here I piled on to my crazy driving mileage, and continued driving late into the night. My late night leg was a 5 miler, I averaged 7:00 pace, but about wet my pants when, in a stretch of deliverance country, in a spot where there were no cars, or runners I heard

crash crash GURNT HONK MROWW. I don't know. Buck deer will apparently make noise before charging. Could have been a cougar or a bear. Fuck. could have been an angry chipmunk on steroids. I was scared. And sprinting. I discussed this with people, one of whom mentioned, "dude, if it's a cougar, you got to face it down."

Uh, I've seen movies. I go up into the woods investigating, and some kind of Predalien leaves my drumsticks behind. But in any event, i'm sprinting in the dark, and I KNOW that if it's a cougar, i need to face it, so I'm running down some crazy country road, looking over my shoulder, holding my water. Finally, another team's sag van comes up on me (oh, it's 3:50 in the morning), and I flag them down:

Me: "Hey, can y'all pace me, I heard some animal growling at me"
Driver (British); "Are all Americans so brave"
Me: "Well, we did invent the disposable diaper"
Driver: "Are you wearing one?"
Me: "Depends"
Driver laughs.

At this point, I'm catching runners, we chat, and eventually another van appears in the back. I say, "thanks, you can race up to the exchange if you need to"
Driver: "Naah. You're entertaining us now."

Eventually, they leave me, and now I'm racing into the exchange. It was fascinating. I thought I was going fast, but the dark, uneven road, demanded a keen awareness of what was going on. My theory is that the proprioception required made things SEEM to be happening faster than I thought they were. I also was running without my race mandated reflective vest (I somehow forgot it at my first exchange: we broke 24 hours only because we never missed an exchange, but this didn't mean that I didn't need every spare moment at the exchanges to go to the blue room, and warm up, and after the driving and what not I just forgot it, and my fatigued team noticed nothing weird when passing me). As I approached the exchange, and worried about getting busted for no vest (a potential 1 hour penalty or DQ), my brilliant plan was to pull my shirt off so it could conceivably look like i was running with the vest in my hand, or that my white-ass chest was reflective enough, and I covered my number on my shorts so I could make the exchange and sprint to oblivion. Either they didn't care, or it didn't matter. But the bibs were no joke. One young lady was hit by a car on the race, but my rural run was better suited to forgetfulness.

We made the exchange, annnnndddd.... I was driving again. We arrived at the next exchange at dawn, now moving up on the pack, enough that we parked right at the exchange, and only had to wait 5 minutes for frenchtoast, bacon, and eggs, and a coffee ($6.50) prepared by some fundraising group. I caught 15 minutes of sleep (literally my only sleep of the race). Off we went. First Laura, then Karen, then Me, an 8 mile (did I mention the previous 12 miles, sleep deprivation, etc). My leg was working me, and I ran it at a 7:15 pace, but oddly, this was the only leg no one passed me on. One guy sat on my wheel for 4 miles, and I somehow shook him. I considered walking, quitting, etc., but only sort of in passing. I mainly just focused on my breathing, and tried to ignore the pain in my leg. I finished in form, and handed off to Evan who, again turned in another 6:45 set. He should have taken my legs: He'd run 5 marathons in a year in preparation for Boston, and where I faded 6:45, 7:00, 7:15, he just held on.

It was very clear: the marathoners (the ladies karen, laura, janet, lisbet, sarah, and evan, greg) all held consistent splits where the rest of us faded a bit. But everyone was strong (enough) and we never screwed up a transition, which I saw happen over and over. For a team that finished 23:59:43, well, no mistakes was significant.

Evan handed off to Scott, a strong runner hamstrung by a groin pull forced to run well below his pace, but he showed great discipline in not hurting himself. I finally got some sleep, nearly 20 minutes, before we arrived at seaside.

We were corporate sponsored (apple/nike) so we hung at the nike tent site for a while, some people got free massages, drank free beer, ate free food. A couple team mates scored some nifty polypro beach blankets. We got our last team picture taken, and headed back to clean up and eat pizza. There was a little bit of ocean-ing, but if you're not from here, you need to understand, you wear a wetsuit to swim in oregon.

After pizza, a small group, organizer Don, Cat, Laura, and Myself went out to shoot some pool and check out the end of the bands... before crashing at 11:30 and waking up 5 to drive back.

Our Co-ed team came in like 76th out of 1000 total teams (all categories), or 4th out of 80 in corporate. Pretty competitive!!! Honestly, the ladies won it for us. We averaged 7:18 as a team for the race, had no major screw ups in transition, no arguments, and through the miracle of wetwipes our van never smelled bad.

Since then, Sunday, I couldn't walk down stairs, or my driveway. to the extent I walked backwards down both. Monday, I was still walking backwards, but I found riding a bike, due to the use of different muscles, was fine as long as i stayed in the saddle (no cranking). So I rode to work, and rode with the team while they ran 40 minutes (I don't count that as training, too slow on the bike, just wanted to do my job. I'm still a few years from coaching from a golf cart, I guess). Today I ran with the team...

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH!

Exquisite pain that defies description. I ran very slow for 3 miles, trying not to throw up, but I DID find that if I ramped it up a bit in the last half mile, that it didn't hurt any more. It's called doms, and i'll recover. But it's no fun. We do have the team time trial this week, a 3200 m (approx) run in a park, that I've done the past 2 years. I guess I'll do it, in the mindset that It's OK to show weakness, but I'll probably repeat it again in a week or two to get a better baseline for personal training.

this weekend, I was planning to repeat an earlier running camp with some friends in an environment where I don't have to watch kids: bike 40 miles, paddle 2, run the mountain, run 13miles, paddle home, bike home, over a 3 day period, with only the mountain run being HARD. At this point, I may have to modify that, but I think I'll start to freshen up in a day or two, so it's still the plan, but I will DEFINITELY modify it, probably, bike 20, walk 4 with gear, sleep, do the mountain (to the best of my ability), sleep, run, sleep, go home. Or something.

thanks for reading. nothing to do with ultimate.