On August 26th I flew to Portland, Oregon to participate in the 2005 Hood to Coast Relay Race. The race is 197 miles starting from the top of Mt. Hood in the middle of Oregon and traverses west across the state through Portland and finishing at Cannon Beach on the Pacific Coast. It is broken up into 36 legs of varying lengths and difficulties and is run by teams of 10-12 members. The first person on the team runs from the start line to the checkpoint at the end of leg 1 where the second team member is waiting to hand off the "baton" (or slap bracelet as the case was). The second team member takes off running for checkpoint 2 where hopefully the third team member is waiting and ready to run. All the teams rent vans to travel from checkpoint to checkpoint while their team member runs. There were 10 of us on the team, made up of mostly Georgetown law students. We started at 5:00 p.m. on Friday August 27th and crossed the finish line on Saturday at 7:14 p.m. - yes, we ran continuously for 26 hrs 14 mins at 8:00 mile pace to cover the 197 miles from Mt. Hood to the Pacific Coast. I myself ran legs 6, 16, 26, and 36 for our team, a total of 23.2 miles. It was awesome to be chosen to run leg 36 and get to cross the finish line for our team. The first sighting of the beach from about 2 miles away was amazing and made the sprint in to the finish line exhilirating. After crossing the official finish line, we got the whole team together and crossed the ceremonial finish line together hand in hand. It was an amazing experience! Please check out my photos from the race and the rest of my Oregon trip at:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=735070172106&page=1&sort_order=0
Hope all is well and will try to update again soon! Be good.
D.
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