For the 23rd running of the Hood to Coast relay, 2 teams from Chicago ventured out to Oregon to participate in the world's largest relay race. Starting at 6000 feet above sea level on Mt. Hood the race continues for 196.8 miles until it reaches the finish line at Seaside Oregon. Each team consists of 12 people and there are a total of 36 legs ranging from 3 to 8 miles in varying degree of difficulty, the average leg been 5˝ miles. 1000 teams start the race, which begins at 8am in a wave system, 20 teams starting every 15 minutes until 7:45 pm.
Our team consisted of 6 men and 6 women participating in the mixed open division. We had a few veterans from last years race with several rookies split into two vans. In "Van Morrison" driven by Robin we had in running order- Tracey Pepoon, Kari Pederson, David Funcheon, Denise Allman, Judy Havlicek and Harry Milling. They passed onto "Van Halen" driven again by JB with runners, Kevin Temple, Sarah Sharon, Adrian Campbell, Allan Parangao, Dan Gomez and (a pregnant!) Jenn Feaney, JB's wife. We once again had trouble with our team name, "Having Fun Between Our Legs" (we did!) being rejected so our official name was "Team Censored".
As we were seeded in our division (10th) we had a late start time, 7:15 on Friday evening, with an anticipated finish time of 23 hours 11 minutes and 56 minutes. As each person finished their first 2 legs this time looked tough to reach but everyone pulled through in the last legs to give us a finished time of 22 hours 57 minutes and 10 seconds putting us 9th in our division (303 teams) and 59th out of 1044 finishers. The overall winning time for the race was 17:36:08 and the winners in our division crossed the line in 19:59:46.
There was a second team from Chicago in the all women's division, mostly made up with our running friends from the "Run Chicago" group and they finished a very credible 6th in their division in 24:34:52.
Everyone is already looking forward to the next edition...
Want to see more? Check out the Hood to Coast Relay website: www.hoodtocoast.com. There you'll find complete information of the race, it's history and Official 2004 Results!
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