"The Mother of All Relays"

This past weekend I walked in the "world's largest relay race" which starts Portland, OR and goes to the coast (Seaside, OR). The Portland to Coast Relay is dubbed "The Mother of All Relays." It is 127 miles long and is literally the "world's largest relay race." Portland to Coast is walked at the same time the Hood to Coast is run. I believe that there are about 500 walking teams that walk Portland to Coast and 1000 running teams that run from Mt. Hood to the Coast. Generally the relay teams are made up of 12 team members and the team is split into a van #1 and van #2. Van #1 starts the race and walks the first 6 legs - from under the Hawthorne bridge in downtown Portland to the fairgrounds in St. Helens, OR. Then van #2 picks up and walks the next 6 legs. Van #1 starts again near Jewel and Mist, OR and then van #2 finishes the race. The entire team crosses the finish line together in Seaside, OR with their last walker.

My team was called "S.O.S" which stood for "Super Outta Shape" - ha! Although we sort of all surprised ourselves and walked as if we needed to disprove our team name! Our start time was 3:45am on Friday morning. Within the first 6 legs we had shaved an entire hour off of our estimated times! I walked my 1st leg along highway 30 in OR keeping a pace of about 1mile every 14 minutes. This was at about 9am in the morning. At 11:30am we had finished and van#2 was on their way so we took the opportunity to eat lunch and the drove to a "sleep site" on the race course to attempt sleeping in our van. (AKA Lisa's suburban!) We were sort of able to sleep since we were so sleep deprived from our 2am wake-up the night before. We would have been able to spread out more and really sleep well if it hadn't been raining. But it was raining so we were all crammed in the van. :)

We started our second part of the race around 8:30pm and my teammate Kerri walked into the dark. My 2nd leg started at 12:30am and I was able to keep a good 15 minute mile pace even with the dark, the mist, the tiredness, and the slight uphill grade. I actually LOVED walking in the dark and found it much easier than walking in the daylight. I couldn't see anything so I didn't know how far I had to go, so I just got into a sort of zone and walked! :) I walked with my iPod in my ears, John's headlamp on my head, and a super cool reflector vest. (I looked AWESOME!) :)

Our team finished the race in 33 hours and 1 minute. We averaged 15.32 minutes per mile pace and cut over 3 hours off of our expected time. While it was an exhausting and totally sleep deprived and honey-bucket filled weekend, :) I would totally do it again and am SO proud of myself and our team. Any takers for the 2010 Portland to Coast? Sign-ups start in October! :)

(More pictures to come!)