36 legs, 24 feet. (by Ben)

If you've ever been stuck in an enclosed space with 5 other stinky sweating guys, after 36 hours of over-exertion and sleep deprivation, then you know exactly how much fun I had last weekend.

I captained a Hood to Coast team, affectionately called the Killer Bunnies, through this year's 197 mile relay race. The race starts at the Timberline lodge on Mt. Hood at an elevation of 6000 feet above sea level. Each member of the 12 person team then runs a 'leg' of about 5 or 6 miles, to an exchange point where they pass a 'baton' to the next member of the team, who runs the next leg. The runners continue this in sequence, Each taking a turn with legs of 5 to 7 miles, until each team member has run 3 legs (for a team total of 36 legs), and the last runner jogs into the costal city of Seaside somewhere between 15 hours (for the elite pros) to 36 hours (for the old farts) later. The team is broken up into two vans of 6 runners each. This way, the first can can follow it's runners while the second van eats and sleeps. Then after 6 legs they switch, and a modest amount of rest can be had.

We managed about 2 hours of sleep during each of the two breaks we had, and our collective team finished in 27 hours, 11 minutes, and 35 seconds. We started the race fairly late (at 5:45 PM), and finished the race just 3 minutes before the race officially ended.

It's hard to explain to an outsider how incredibly difficult it is to run on sore legs in the darkness of the middle of the night, on roads where you've never been; The humiliation of being passed, or needing to run faster than you normally would to keep your team on pace to finish, yet having nothing left in the tank. It's hard to describe the feelings of camaraderie that you begin to feel for your van-mates as you share in common trials, and revel in common triumphs; as you wax and wane between sleepiness and exuberance. It's a thing that must be experienced first hand to understand.

This is one of the reasons that I decided to start a team of my own. I'd run the race two years ago as a last minute walk-on to a team I'd found on Craigslist who'd lost a runner to injury and needed a 12th runner to participate in the race. I'd had such a fun time with total strangers that I immediately began to formulate who I'd love to share that experience with the most. I formed my own dream team in my mind:

I'd run the race with my wife, first and foremost. But 'not being a runner', she'd never agree to do it with me, so she was out. Not to mention that running with a 7 pound fetus strapped to your stomach would make running theoretically harder. I'm hoping that one year I can talk her into running with me, and then maybe, just maybe, I'll get her to run the Hood to Coast a few years after that. Hopefully our kids will be on the High School Cross Country teams by then and can run with us.

My second and obvious choice was my father-in-law Steve. He's the kind of guy who finds profound truth and wisdom in the simplest of situations. He sees possibility and perceives truth where others just see routine life. I was sure that he glean more than any runner ever had before if he participated. He's run some marathons and I knew that he'd be up for it. As it turns out, it became a good fitness goal for him, and he made great strides (both literal and figurative) to prepare for the race. He was in, and I was officially excited.

My next choice for the team was my perennial running buddy, and triathlon training partner Seth. He now lived in Arizona, and at the time I thought he'd never run a relay race and wanted him to see what in my mind was the culmination of the running experience, taking such a personal sport and making it a social experience. He was in for sure, and would have to be our anchor with the speed he's developed over the years.

Ben and Bethany, my sibling-in-laws, are budding competitive athletes, and were really excited about giving it a try. Plus, getting to see Bethany run with her dad was going to be awesome.

After that, I was happy. Each runner had a few friends that were interested, and filling the rest of the spots seemed like it would be child's play. Unfortunately, we didn't get into the race in 2007, the year we first tried. We were one of 1600 teams applying for the 1000 spots. We waited and then last year applied again for the 2008 race and got it. Hooray! Too bad that so many of our original runners had dropped out or lost interest. As the date for the race loomed closer and closer and even more people dropped out. Even Ben and Bethany got injured in the last month, which found us all scrambling looking for enough runners to be able to compete.

With a day to spare, and just shy of running out of all hope, we snagged our last two runners (A friend of a friend of the receptionist of a dental office owned by a guy in our ward, and a total stranger from an online message board). All of the details fell into place, including wonderful places to sleep that were found by friends of friends, last-minute volunteer work by Ben and Bethany who got up at 3 in the morning to man the course per the race rules so that we could compete, and some borrowed vans and car-toppers that made the 3 day voyage a breeze.



It's clear to me now that this race wasn't as cathartic as the first one. I knew the drill, and wasn't as pleasantly surprised as a beginner must be by the scale of the undertaking. I was also disappointed with my 7:47 minute/miles over my 17 miles of running, instead of the 6:45's I average last time. But this was easily overshadowed by the logistical beauty of coincidences and actions that brought everything together for a really happy and easy race. Our runners were all ideally timed to get us to the finish line with mere minutes to spare. Had all of our runner run each mile one second slower, we wouldn't have finished the race in time. We had relatively no traffic, and amazing weather. One of our vans was composed of total strangers, and they all got along great, and bonded well. My van ended up being filled with some of my closest friends, and people I respect most in this world, and I feel better for bonding with them, and privileged for getting to be the one to bring them into the 'Hood-To-Coast Fold'. I was also happy, a few days after the grumbling had died down, that several of the oaths to never run it again had been conveniently forgotten the way they so often are, as the pain of the race fades.

You'd never imagine that such a time could be so meaningful, stuck in a car with sweaty guys and tired and exhausted as can be. But perhaps this type of self-imposed trial is just what our over-indulgent generation needs to recognize the deep happiness that stems from adversity. Not to mention how much fun it is to run your brains out and then run some more... At least I remember it being fun, in retrospect.