いきましょう！: Hood to Coast

Hood to Coast began bright and early at Mt Hood's Timberline Lodge on Friday morning. Our team, Vancouver USA Marathon, started the race at 9am. Thankfully, I was leg 10 in van 2 this year and got to sleep in (well, that was the plan anyway. The boys decided 5am would be a great time for a party, so I only got about 4 hours of sleep Friday morning.)

Around 10am we headed up to Sandy to get the van ready to rumble.

Decorating the van

The leg 6 runner didn't arrive until almost 2pm, giving us plenty of time to relax. The opposite happened to our van 1. They got a late start out of Portland, ran into traffic and barely made the start with 20 minutes to spare. There's enough nerves at the start of a race, I'd hate to add stressing out over being late too!

The start of leg 7 in Sandy

Exchange 6

Van 2 is off!

Leg 7

Mt Hood in the distance

Leg 8

Our van had a smooth start. The first three runners and exchanges went quickly. My first leg was next.

Silly me: when I was planning my food strategy, for some reason I thought I should stop eating around noon to have everything settled by 2. Not good because my leg didn't kick off until closer to 5pm. From exchange 8 to exchange 9 (the start of my first leg), our van took a small detour (and I was driving, another bad idea). I didn't have time to prepare and in the rush I forgot my race belt with Gu's in the van.

Looking for my teammate at exchange 9

We made the exchange with only few minutes before Darren's arrival. I started off at an easy pace knowing I needed to conserve energy for my next two legs. I realized the nutrition mistake almost instantly when my stomach started cramping up. Leg 10 runs just over 5 miles on Portland's Springwater trail, giving no opportunity for support from my van (although a nice family was handing out bottles of water). There was very little shade and the afternoon sun was unrelenting. I took plenty of walk breaks and finished in 56:16, almost an 11 min/mile pace.