HTC 2009 BABY!!!

So, originally I was going to run Hood to Coast with some friends in my ward, but I bailed out when girls camp got postponed to the week of the relay. I just didn't think I could come home from a week at girls camp & plunge into a 36 hour relay race. Two days before leaving to camp, I ran into our friend Chris Harper at Milgard's company picnic. He knew I had run HTC 2 years ago & asked if I was running this year. I explained the girls camp thing & he asked what time I would be getting home Friday from girls camp, the day HTC started. I told him around lunch time. He informed me that the team he was running on had a runner quit & needed a leg 12 runner, the last runner out of van 2; my first run would begin around midnight Friday & that I could meet up with van 2 at 10pm-ish near exchange 10. I was immediatley interested! He made a phone call to the team captain and I was in!!!

After getting home Friday at noon, Chris helped me unload the camp trailor. Kathy, who had come down & spent the week with the boys while I was at camp.....THANK YOU KATHY!!!!....started doing all my laundry and made some FRESH salsa for lunch! We returned the trailor to the owner. Chris started washing the car; it was super-dirty. I showered, made a quick trip to the store for some snacks & gear. Chris had to make a run to REI for me to get some reflective wear since I was running at night. I sat on the couch for about 2 hours with the hand massager on my legs and back trying to get loose. At 8pm, Chris drove me over to east side of Portland. After a few phone calls, van 2 with 5 out of the 11 other runners on the team picked me up at a gas station. I had never met these people before (our friend Harper was in van 1). I kissed Chris goodbye about 10pm. The people in my van turned out to be REALLY cool! (what a relief!) We were team 236 Rev Up if anyone wants to check out our results on the HTC website. Anyway, it was only about an hour later that I was on my way to take a quick bathroom break & tie my shoes up tighter before I heard our team runner announced. SHOOT! I never got the bathroom break and ran 6.4 miles in the dark along a trail & through city neighborhoods with my shoes a little loose. Leg 12 was really neat to run. I got to hand off under the Hawthorne Bridge in downtown Portland. It was so neat to see the skyline lit up as I got closer & closer. To my surprise, I felt really good on my first run & did it in 56 minutes! Most of the teams decorate their team vans before the race. Since my team didn't know me, they drew a stick figure of me and "Christine, who are you?" Classic!

Vans keep track of "kills". When you pass someone running, it counts as a kill. When you are passed, it counts as a minus. So, I was killed 3 times on my first leg. Alex is a MACHINE. He never once was passed the entire relay. I think he ended up with something like 50 kills when all was said & done. He ran sub-6 minute miles. Jule was our team captain. She lives near downtown, so when I finished running leg 12, our van headed over to her house to shower & sleep for a couple of hours while van 1 was running to St. Helens. Then we drove out there at 3:30am. Gary is from England. He's lived in Portland for 9 years. He has a thick British accent. Angela & Dean were really cool too.

My second run, leg 24, started at 8:15am. I ran a supposedly easy 4.92 miles through the Battle Creek Bridge area into Mist. I suffered big time on this leg. I was sore, tired & BEAT! My sides especially gave me grief. I kept thinking it was because of sleeping on the ground all week. I later realized it was from doing the camp slip & slide on my belly about 10 times. : ) My run time was a lousy 45 minutes. Our van headed over to Jewell HS, showered, ate & slept a bit. I ran into 2 people from the team I ran on 2 years ago, Travis & Colton Naeff.

At 12:30pm, we were in the van again on our way to exchange with van 1. Being the last runner out of van 2 meant I was the glory runner to finish it off on the beach in Seaside. I used Julie's roller stick the whole time leading up to my last run to get loose and roll out the aches. At the last exchange, I coincidentally met up with the team from my ward, the Stormin' Mormons! I got to visit with them for about 20 minutes as we waited for our runners to come in. At 5pm, I started my last leg, a moderate 5.23 mile run mostly downhill (THANK GOODNESS!) to Seaside. As I came into the tunnel, I saw Chris, heard Cassie, hooked up with my team and we ran across the finish line! I ran it in about 45 minutes.

Our team's final stats:

Total running time: 26 hours, 48 minutes 14 seconds.

238th out of 1004 teams overall!!!

In the mixed open category, we were 45th out of 314!

The best relay team was Brooks Beast; they ran it in 16:55:27. (perspective)

I LOVED running Hood to Coast again! It was an AMAZING way to end summer vacation. I'm so glad team Rev Up hooked me up! It couldn't have worked out any better. : )