9.29.2010
9.19.2010
9.01.2010
Chocolate Milk Football Club Hood To Coast 2010
Sus and I, and 10 acquaintances, and 12,000 others spent last Friday and Saturday running from the top of Mt Hood to Seaside, OR.
That's 197 miles.
Which is really far.
And, we did it in a bit over 31 hours.
Super cool, right?!
Those skinny dudes that "won", with no arse fat to sit on, finished in like 17 hours.
That totally means that we're like twice as tough as those quills to do it for almost twice as long!
I was nervous as heck before my first leg, not really knowing how stuff worked and what to expect.
I got to my starting position and had to wait a few minutes before I could see Mike, cruisin down Hwy 30, like a semi with no brakes and a methed out driver with somewhere to be.
He'd just finished his first leg after zero training, so I was seriously heartened that I might make it through my first leg without hurling.
I took off from the exchange, to the soundtrack of traffic and the cheers of my teammates from across the street, and thought to myself; "HOLY CRAP! WHAT AM I DOING?!?!?" and then tried to settle in to putting one foot in front of the other.
You learn a lot about yourself doing things like this.
I learned that if there's someone in front of me, I want to pass them.
Especially when you're told that when you pass people, they are called "Roadkill".
And you get a point for every roadkill you pass.
I tried to keep a reasonable pace that I could maintain for the whole 5.75 miles, but when you see prospective roadkill ahead, and there's a course camera man stationed just about where you could pass said roadkill if you hustled, you might be tempted to up the cadence a bit and have the glorious moment captured on film.
In an odd, surreal moment, that I'm not sure actually happened, I was shown which road to turn down by George W. Bush.
It was too early in the race to be hallucinating, so I think he musta been serving some kind of community service.
I made it through the leg, faster than expected and got to hand off the shiney blue slap bracelet to my lovely wife.
Sus took off and I began the attempt to recover after the longest uninterpreted run of my life.
My second leg started around midnight in the hills outside of St Helens.
This time Mike comes storming up the hill towards me, out of the darkness, like a laser eyed rhino with a turboprop tail that runs on moonshine.
He slapped the band on my arm and I was off into the darkness to tackle the monsters that awaited me there. And there were monsters.
Totally real, metaphorical, monsters.
The first two miles were steep up, steep down, steep up, steeper down, get out the ladder steep up, frick, where's that escalator steep up, and finally, mercifully level for twelve feet.
This was followed by three glorious miles, bathed in starlight, chased by the moon, smelling like tranquility and cricket wings.
Then came the last brutal, cramp educing, bastard of a mile to the next exchange.
Hills are where roadkill seem to congregate.
I collected a few last specimens before I was done and called out "292!" as I approached the intensely lit exchange to send my wife off on one of the hardest legs of the course.
I'll let her blog about that, but it was basically straight up for ever and half on a dusty gravel road.
Mad props to the wifey.
Over the next 5 hours our van members ran through the night, dancing through the dark like the creatures Dan Akroyd and Chevy Chase dressed up as in Spy's Like Us when they were freaking out the Russian missile crew.
We ended up finding a place to rest with about a two hour window in which to get sleep, however the excitement of finding that spot, coupled with the sunrise, the loud Aussie dude, the general delerium and the fear of oversleeping left me with about 15 minutes of that state in between where you can see that sleep donkey, but can't quite make it come to you when you hold out that nice aether carrot.
Anywho, We got to the exchange and waited to see Mike come charging down that hill like a locomotive powered by Chuck Norris's tears on tracks made of frozen razor blades.
In a few minutes he delivers that sacred sweaty slap bracelet and I'm off on my last 4 mile trot.
This time my right knee is killing!
I have since learned that there is something called an IT band and if you don't warm up and cool down properly it can make itself seriously annoying.
Drawing on a deep deep well of strength, will and desire, to gather more roadkill, I continued to put one foot in front of the other, repeatedly, until I made it to my last exchange, racing to the cheers of friends, fans and admirers alike to the glorious finale of my efforts.
Totally killed it.
The rest is kind of a sleep deprived/over exertion induced blur involving trigonometry problems, dating math issues, and for some reason, a vague recollection that "C" in the word "Scythe" is actually silent.
This rambling doesn't do justice to the actual experience.
The best parts are almost completely the people I was with.
The crazy, wacky, lovely people I was with.
Thank you.
That's 197 miles.
Which is really far.
And, we did it in a bit over 31 hours.
Super cool, right?!
Those skinny dudes that "won", with no arse fat to sit on, finished in like 17 hours.
That totally means that we're like twice as tough as those quills to do it for almost twice as long!
I was nervous as heck before my first leg, not really knowing how stuff worked and what to expect.
I got to my starting position and had to wait a few minutes before I could see Mike, cruisin down Hwy 30, like a semi with no brakes and a methed out driver with somewhere to be.
He'd just finished his first leg after zero training, so I was seriously heartened that I might make it through my first leg without hurling.
I took off from the exchange, to the soundtrack of traffic and the cheers of my teammates from across the street, and thought to myself; "HOLY CRAP! WHAT AM I DOING?!?!?" and then tried to settle in to putting one foot in front of the other.
You learn a lot about yourself doing things like this.
I learned that if there's someone in front of me, I want to pass them.
Especially when you're told that when you pass people, they are called "Roadkill".
And you get a point for every roadkill you pass.
I tried to keep a reasonable pace that I could maintain for the whole 5.75 miles, but when you see prospective roadkill ahead, and there's a course camera man stationed just about where you could pass said roadkill if you hustled, you might be tempted to up the cadence a bit and have the glorious moment captured on film.
In an odd, surreal moment, that I'm not sure actually happened, I was shown which road to turn down by George W. Bush.
It was too early in the race to be hallucinating, so I think he musta been serving some kind of community service.
I made it through the leg, faster than expected and got to hand off the shiney blue slap bracelet to my lovely wife.
Sus took off and I began the attempt to recover after the longest uninterpreted run of my life.
My second leg started around midnight in the hills outside of St Helens.
This time Mike comes storming up the hill towards me, out of the darkness, like a laser eyed rhino with a turboprop tail that runs on moonshine.
He slapped the band on my arm and I was off into the darkness to tackle the monsters that awaited me there. And there were monsters.
Totally real, metaphorical, monsters.
The first two miles were steep up, steep down, steep up, steeper down, get out the ladder steep up, frick, where's that escalator steep up, and finally, mercifully level for twelve feet.
This was followed by three glorious miles, bathed in starlight, chased by the moon, smelling like tranquility and cricket wings.
Then came the last brutal, cramp educing, bastard of a mile to the next exchange.
Hills are where roadkill seem to congregate.
I collected a few last specimens before I was done and called out "292!" as I approached the intensely lit exchange to send my wife off on one of the hardest legs of the course.
I'll let her blog about that, but it was basically straight up for ever and half on a dusty gravel road.
Mad props to the wifey.
Over the next 5 hours our van members ran through the night, dancing through the dark like the creatures Dan Akroyd and Chevy Chase dressed up as in Spy's Like Us when they were freaking out the Russian missile crew.
We ended up finding a place to rest with about a two hour window in which to get sleep, however the excitement of finding that spot, coupled with the sunrise, the loud Aussie dude, the general delerium and the fear of oversleeping left me with about 15 minutes of that state in between where you can see that sleep donkey, but can't quite make it come to you when you hold out that nice aether carrot.
Anywho, We got to the exchange and waited to see Mike come charging down that hill like a locomotive powered by Chuck Norris's tears on tracks made of frozen razor blades.
In a few minutes he delivers that sacred sweaty slap bracelet and I'm off on my last 4 mile trot.
This time my right knee is killing!
I have since learned that there is something called an IT band and if you don't warm up and cool down properly it can make itself seriously annoying.
Drawing on a deep deep well of strength, will and desire, to gather more roadkill, I continued to put one foot in front of the other, repeatedly, until I made it to my last exchange, racing to the cheers of friends, fans and admirers alike to the glorious finale of my efforts.
Totally killed it.
The rest is kind of a sleep deprived/over exertion induced blur involving trigonometry problems, dating math issues, and for some reason, a vague recollection that "C" in the word "Scythe" is actually silent.
This rambling doesn't do justice to the actual experience.
The best parts are almost completely the people I was with.
The crazy, wacky, lovely people I was with.
Thank you.
This blog, by one of those wackos, has a right fine relation of the events as well.
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