Hood to Coast 2002

Jim Kornell

I was recruited for Hood to Coast this year and couldn't pass up the chance. Hood to Coast is a 12-person relay of 196 miles, beginning high on snow-covered Mount Hood in Oregon, and continuing through Portland and down to Seaside. I ran on a mixed super-masters team - everyone over 50, with our team's members ranging in age up to 64, six men, six women. A thousand teams of twelve people, starting in waves every fifteen minutes from 9:30 in the morning to 8:15 at night.

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Waiting in the SF airport for the connector to Portland, on my way to run the Hood to Coast with 11 people I've never met before. Nervous, and feeling that kind of inner activation, arousal that precedes racing. I'm more concerned than I might otherwise be because I'm teamed with famous runners - four-time masters runner of the year Laurie Binder (AR 2:35 at 44); Barbara Miller, WR holder for W60 marathon (3:11), Diane Palmason (31.62 for 200 at 62, and marathon winner), Mike Heffernan (member of outright winning H2C teams). And me, I'm just regular runner, plus I've missed a bunch of training from the cold and the travel. And my first leg will be at something like 1:30 in the morning. And the last few nights, the recovery from Eastern time hasn't been as quick as I'd like - I keep waking up, as I did this morning, at 3:30 AM and not quite going back to sleep.

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After, written in the Portland airport and on the plane, still high.

Lynn Harmon meets me at the airport. Experienced runner, 2:36 marathoner as a master, amazingly knowledgable about the history of distance running. He drove me out on the course to give me  a preview of what was to come, all the while telling me amazing stories of driving Herb Elliot (WR 1500, Rome Gold), of when Henry Rono (four WRs in one summer) was on his team, of John Campbell (2:11 WR master marathoner), Priscella Welch (NY winner, 2:26 at 42). I'm enjoying these great stories, but part of me is thinking, what am I doing here? Oh well, I think, I'll do what I do - the essential endurance athlete's view.

The people:

Laurie Binder. If I fell down a crevasse, there's nobody I'd rather have up at the top. She'd climb in, laugh, tell me not to be such a dummy, drag me out, check me over and fix me if I needed it, then she'd just assume I'd do the same thing for the other guy next time it came up. After her last, long, hard leg, she was exhilarated, wonderfully high. She and I had the two long final legs, and we'd made a deal I had to run hard and she would too, and when unexpectedly she kept picking up strength the further she ran, she had that wonderful rare sense of a limitless inner well - why is it over so soon?

Gary Clarida. I could imagine having Gary as a training partner for twenty years and not growing tired of his company. Proud of his kids without clinging to it - some people are proud of their kids but you sense an underlying hold, an unspoken demand that they be given credit. Not so at all with Gary, proud but in the way of someone who sees his kids for the independent adults they are. I had the longest sections, Gary the hardest. If he had the slightest complaint about that, I never heard anything close. And he had the sunrise leg, with the sun rising through the clouds over the majestic Willamette and the near-full moon still visible above the hills the other side.

Jeanette Groesz. Not exactly a stoic, but quieter than most of us (which of course was easy), serious out on the course, laughing about herself after. Her eyes taking everything in, but not with nervousness or defense, just kindness and an interested fascination at being able to observe such an odd laboratory of interactions.

Barb Miller and her God of Smiling Mellowness husband Doug. Calm, focused. Managing to not have false modesty but at the same time no 'external' pride, never even the tiniest whiff of elitism - if anything the opposite. Always willing to defend the virtues of Modesto - "you should see our peach trees!" and convinced that any growing food grows at least 20% better in her home town. I have an image of Barb, 11:00 the night after we'd all finished, showered, and eaten, Barb herself having run a wildly fast last leg, standing at the sink and washing up for everyone, then in the morning making sure any crumbs had been vacuumed off our host's floor. Not ostentatiously "taking care of us," simply seeing something that needed to be done and doing it.

Diane Palmason. Beautiful Diane, telling about being allowed to run the longest distance open to women at the Commonwealth Games in 1954 even though she was 17 and normally you had to wait to 18 to run that far - 220 yards. Diane radiates strength simply in being so fully herself she effortlessly opens a space for everyone around her to be more themselves.

Carol Powell. Nervous about being (she claimed) the slowest in our group. Alert, smart, unconsciously gifted at being interested in everybody, at making everyone feel when talking with her they were the center of her universe. So worried before each of her legs, especially the middle leg, with one of the hardest climbs in the entire race - then just destroying the two poor Mojo boys.

Erik Sten. The team captain, not running this year, but bringing us all together, managing the sponsors. Excitable Erik, wanting everything to be perfect, or better. Thrilled to have us win - it clearly meant more to him than to any of the rest of us - and eager to trumpet our individual virtues. Dying to be the perfect host, to have everything go perfectly for us, to make the sponsors happy, to make everyone happy. The awards ceremony seemed the high point of his year.

Scott Taylor. Tall, angular, respectful especially of women in that way former military men have, and I suspect stubborn as a mule. (I could be wrong about that - but I bet I'm not.) A two-time Olympic pentathlete, two bachelor's, two master's, and an MBA, and you'd never know unless you brought up corporate accounting reform - in which case he'd transform into knowledgeable exposition of the evils of options and the strengths and weaknesses of various  regulatory changes - forceful without being dogmatic.

Bonnie Walker. Nervous, excited, and absolutely willing. If the team had announced that her job was to be strapped to the front of a rocket, she's be smiling with eagerness and hoping she could do well. She was our leadoff runner, and had the first, downhill, leg, so steep that a Nike runner once averaged sub-4. "But I like downhill running!"

Because of the way the vans and our leg assignments worked, I spent much less time with Ken, Mike, and Mark -

Mike Heffernan. Quiet, quietly ironic, unlikely ever to be seduced by seriousness to a degree that he might loose his self-effacing sense of the easy absurdity of what we were doing.

Mark Lawrence. Bonnie's husband, relaxed, easy going (at least this weekend), and possibly a little bemused by the whole adventure. Two of his legs in the full dark, but no whinging (to use the Canadian word).

Ken Travis. Modest, willing to do whatever was asked, contributing into every niche where his attention would make the rest of our lives easier.

The event -

Running in the dark. Strange and a little disorienting. We had the good fortune of a near-full moon, and very high in the sky on my night leg. And, the leg was on a gravel bike path with no approaching headlights to blind me. But it was hard to get a sense of pace with almost no visual clueing. I'd go up hill and not know how far it was, or downhill and not know that either. The dappled moonlight would give de-colored textural passage, with the shaded spots a pure black.

The MoJos. Two teams of 20's/young 30's guys from Milwaukee, their teams and ours sharing a starting time, trading places back and forth. One of their vans had a great sound system, and they played lots of 60's rock - Doors, Hendrix, Clapton. Getting in front, getting behind. A great moment on the last leg when they approached from behind with Whole Lotta Love jacked up and just beginning - I was pumping my fists and all of them leaning out the windows screaming encouragement.

Food. Weird, oddly spaced, more Gatorade than I could force myself to swallow. Great stop at a Grange out in the farmland where breakfast could be had for $4. I think I may have done the 40-30-30 diet at that stop - 40% pancakes, 30% butter (by volume), 30% coffee. That plus PowerBars when I could get them down and almond butter sandwiches made with a plastic fork in the back of the van.

Sleep. I talked to some kids in the airport who said they'd just fallen asleep between legs. Damn kids. I dozed as best as I could, but no real sleep. It had less effect that I'd have thought, but it would have if we'd gone any further.

Course. Beautiful. My last leg was through gently rolling farmland with views of the distant Columbia, under clear cool skies.

The vans. Joking, napping, talking quietly, massaging sore hamstrings, caring for one another. A bunch of highly competitive people, yet within the van there was no competition, none of the too-typical sense of underlying sniffing and jockeying for status. Most people think men are the ones who do that, but my observation is that women who don't know each other do it more, though far less obviously. But it was absent - and like a background noise that's always there, striking when it's expected but missing. Conversation: Carol and I telling Scott to change jobs - hey, we've already known you for 12 hours now, shouldn't we be able to tell you how to run your life?

Running. Much better than I thought (or feared). Amazingly, sub-six for my 19.6 miles. Deep concentration in each leg, which for me is the core of running. The last leg I thought would be death - either mechanical and painfully slow, or worse. Instead it was death, but fluid, balanced, and with constantly recreated inner focus. It was a beautiful leg, both the countryside and the inner concentration.

Party. Erik had managed a beachhouse for us, 15 miles down the road from the finish. One of the most welcome showers in the last ten years. Of the physical elements of the event, that shower was my most pure reward. Then a delicious Alfredo lasagna Mike made us, salad and a sponsor's excellent ale, talking until 11:00 or later despite our lack of sleep. Running talk quickly turning to life at large - discussing Glenn Gould's Bach interpretations with Diane, his son's physics career with Gary (already in Edinboro and Japan, Bern next), the differences between men and women (no-one had any opinions). To sleep with a few quiet conversations still lingering, the sound of the crashing waves coming in through the open window.

Plane home. Tired, but floating in a quiet high. Could that only have been 22 hours?