2002 Hood to Coast Relay Race

2002 Hood to Coast Relay Race
196.3 miles of shear madness

The saga really began in the summer of 2001 when Kirsten from the Palo Alto Running Club (PARC) asked if my lovely and talented wife (LATW), Janine, and I would like to run the Hood to Coast relay race with a motley collection of runners from PARC calling themselves Just Plain Nuts. They had had a few defections to the other side, a team calling themselves the Mixed Nuts. Janine and I thought it would be fun to be trapped in a minivan for 24 hours with 4 other sweaty smelly people. The PARC people were reportedly much more into personal hygiene than the Huffers and Puffers we had run the Providian Relay with in 2000. We were assured by Kirsten that nothing like the Jean-Luc Incident would happen during the H2C. Janine and I still had psychological scars from that horrifying episode.

By the time the race rolled around, we had recruited Fred "Flash" Kitson and Suzanne "Celery & Clams" Kowalski to replace two runners who had to go into the witness protection program after witnessing the Jean-Luc Incident. The four of us journeyed north to Oregon (that state between California and the state of Microsoft. Bill Gates had been threatening to invade Oregon to take control of the Nike and Intel resources, but a feisty band of Birkenstock wearing, tofu eating, tree hugging Soccer Moms had managed to keep the Gates Army at bay. A truce in the hostilities had been called for the H2C weekend, but Gates was threatening to launch a potentially lethal Nocturnal Evening Right about Dinnertime (NERD) attack, but no one knew when it might be.

Undeterred and armed with a variety of high tech gadgets from our very own "M", Fred, we ran H2C in Van 2 with Kirsten and her significant other, Dave. We ran well, finishing in just over 24 hours, 24:18, but failed to beat our rivals, the dastardly Mixed Nuts. Fred tried all manner of electronic countermeasures, but was unable to keep the Mixsters from passing us at the end. My LATW Janine attempted to throw them off our scent by taking a few wrong turns and trying to lead the Mixsters onto the highway, but those Mixsters were wily and avoided the ruse.

Not to be out run by the Mixsters in 2002, Kirsten recruited some top running talent to fill a few vacancies on the Just Plain Nuts team. From Chicago, by way of Kenya, she lured Jaime and his fiancée Bethto join the team. Jaime was the product of a genetic engineering experiment where the running strengths of the top Kenya runners were spliced with the nice guy genes found in a rare few Midwestern towns. The product was a really nice guy who could run like the wind. Beth came along to keep their van organized and supported. Another addition to the team was Patricia who grew up running in Bogotá Columbia. Needless to say, she was extremely fast. A last minute replacement for Noreene, who suffered an injury in the last month prior to the race, was Clara, an exceptional runner from Cleveland. Yes folks, I said Cleveland. Not know for breeding runners, unless you consider running from the couch to the refrigerator to grab a beer during Cleveland Browns games commercial breaks.

Back for a second year as Just Plain Nuts were my LATW Janine, me, Kirsten, Dave, Fred, Dave "Wibby" Wibbelsmann, Patty, Todd, and Suzanne. We rented "BIG" vans this year so that each of us had our own suite in the back of the van. Unfortunately, Fred decided to bring a good portion of his garage contents, so his suite was a bit cramped. While rummaging through his bags, we located 4 strings of Christmas lights and a lighted pink flamingo. Also in Fred's bag were three 12 volt power converters, a blender, a DVD player, a portable hot tub, and a partridge in a pear tree. We used the power converters and Christmas lights to decorate the vans, the blender to make post race margaritas, watched Sex in the City on the DVD player, soaked in the hot tub between running legs, and had a fine post race dinner of partridge in a white wine pear sauce.

This year the Huffers and Puffers were in van 1 with the exception of Suzanne who wanted to convert the PARC runners over to her celery eating ways. Fred ran leg 1 which started at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. A very steep descent for 5 miles, Fred brought extra cushioned insoles for the punishing descent, plus a few ropes and carabineers in case his descent got out of control. He was moving so fast down the hill that we had to burn rubber down the mountain to get to the first transition. When Fred arrived in the transition area, he handed off to Dave O'Neal, and then we did a quick knee transplant on him so he could run the rest of his legs. Dave ran a scorching leg to hand off to Janine, followed by Kirsten, me, then anchoring our van, Clara. We grabbed a bite of pizza and headed for the hotel to get in a few winks. Since Jaime and Patricia were in van 2 supplementing the blinding speed of Suzanne, Patty, Wibby, and Todd, we only had about an hour and half to sleep, 30 minutes of that time were spent helping Fred carry his bags up to the room. Back on the road at 12:30 AM, we started our second legs in the wee hours. Despite the late hour, we all ran fast legs transitioning to van 2. Other than an ugly encounter with an overflowing Honey Bucket, some controversy with a race official over what will be called the "O'Neal Maneuver, and a tense moment with the Oregon Highway Patrol over our red, white, and blue lights, we finished our portion of the race in record time

Dave drove us to the finish in Seaside to await the arrival of our teammates. We all fell asleep, including, I think, Dave, but made it safely into town. Van 2 destroyed their legs bringing the Just Plain Nuts in at 23 hours 15 minutes, placing the team 9th our of 290 coed open teams. Our archrivals, the Mixed Nuts came in behind us to place 13th, a good showing from a great competitive team. Way to go Mixsters! Congrats to the Just Plain Nuts for an awesome finish and thanks for a great weekend. We are ready for next year, Fred is already starting to pack his bags with gadgets and goodies.