197 Miles Later

The 2010 Hood to Coast is in the books and Team Amazing Awaits proudly left the beach—some limping, some yawning, most doing both—knowing they set a new team record!  27 hours, 46 minutes, finishing 374th overall.

The picturesque scene at the Timberline Lodge at base of Mount Hood provided a fitting start for the race and it was all downhill from there! While there were 1000 teams—12,000 people—in the race, not all teams start at the same time and so there’s ample room on the mountainside. Start times span across a 12-hour period, beginning at 6:30am; our team’s punishment began at 11. After the traditional team photo with the Mt Hood backdrop, Jeano started things off for Team AA with a 5-mile steep descent, followed by another similar leg ran by Tasha—later dubbed “Puker.”  Puker then handed the wristban off to her boyfriend, Darin—later dubbed “The Puker Cleaner-Upper” who handed off to Chris, who relayed to this writer who gladly passed on to Courtney, a man more manly than his name projects.

Not one mile into my 6.08 mile section I came upon a Canadian woman who looked an awful lot like a random runner I’d met at about mile 5 of last May’s 56-mile Comrades marathon in South Africa. As I passed her and had that thought, she said, “Is that you, Paul? It’s Cathy from Comrades!” The moment “Is” crossed her lips I knew it was her. I ran along side her for a brief spell and made the expected small talk about how cool it was to cross paths on the other side of the planet at another amazing event. She then told me to stop talking and start running…

The finish of my first leg ended with a 1.5 mile uphill push which I truly enjoyed pushing, “killing” as many competitors as I could before handing off to Courtney. Other than the blister on the very bottom of Stumpy that I imagined might suck later in the race, I was happy with the effort which took approximately 43 minutes (the time keeping system lacks exactness) or just over seven-minute miles.

After Courtney’s leg, Van 1’s duties were on hold while the other half dozen team members comprising Van 2 did their thing. Meanwhile, we were treated to showers and a fine dinner at Jeano’s athletic club in downtown Portland (I had the grilled salmon and mud pie/espresso desert!), near the second van transition, pictured here.
The crowd at the van transition erupted as Van 2’s closing runner, above-knee amputee Sandy Dukat, came around the corner.

Sandy handed off to Jeano before that half of the team headed out for food and a rest. Had Jeano had the good fortune of starting ten seconds earlier, two hundred yards later she wouldn’t have been at the front end of 150 other runners awaiting the passing of a boat under a Willamette River drawbridge! The stall lasted six minutes which I’m sure seemed like 30 to those stuck there.  (Jeano second run marked the beginning of darkness and, fittingly, her third and final leg, 12 runners later, marked the dawn of a new day.)

After we all had our second run, Van 2 took over at around 2am and we drove directly to the next van transition at an open field where the organizers had roped off a couple large rectangles for athletes to throw down their sleeping bags. These areas are then awashed in 10,000 mega watt spot lights to add to the sleep challenge—although they say the lights are to save athletes from getting run over by sleepy van drivers as has happened in the past.

I was rudely awakened in my 67th minute of sleep when Van 2’s recon man let it be known they had arrived. Jeano was off and running and we were soon packed up and on the road again.

Perhaps it was the dinner, the stop-n-starting of the van experience, or both, that caused Tasha’s innards to disagree with her, but in any case her anxiety rose as Jeano approached the exchange. She was already having trouble keeping things from exiting both designated in-n-out orifices and I was told later that my comment to her, “If you pass out or puke or crap yourself, just shake it off—or wipe it off,” which I yelled from across the street among many fellow runners, brought her nary an ounce of confidence.  A mile later she earned the Puker moniker. Perhaps we should have been a bit more respectful as the tough young lady didn’t walk a yard of the rest of her alloted mileage before puking again after handing off the wristlet…

Said wristlet was handed off in proper succession before I grabbed it for my final leg which began with a steep three-mile ascent followed by an equally steep three-mile descent. Given a choice, I’ll take an uphill battle any day; for me downhills are stump pounding/soundside quad pounding punishment. Yes, I often run these backward to lessen the discomfort, but since I was looking to go as fast as possible and since it would be over soon, I did my best to let it fly. In doing so, that blister from section #1 opened up and I was soon reduced to walking backward in search of the fastest, most manageable means of covering the next two miles. Thankfully, the final mile was less steep and at the third reboot I thought to move a sweat-loosened preventive-maintenance laden Tegaderm bandage from one area to loosely cover the pink, moist under layer of derm. This made a 12-minute mile shuffle manageable and I reached the transition with minimal misery.

Courtney then ripped into his final leg and soon Van 1 was headed to the finish line at Seaside beach for bratwurst, beers and bragging rights.  A couple hours later we were informed that our teammates in Van 2 were closing in and it would soon be confirmed that Team Amazing Awaits would set a new team record (this was the third year in a row The Hartford has sponsored this team). Sandy Dukat hobbled along the soft sand toward the finish line on her $30,000 above-knee prosthesis made with Ossur parts at A Step Ahead Prosthetics. The crowd cheered, the teammates put up the high-fives and it was confirmed, once again, that some segments of mankind are incomplete without self-induced suffering.