That's how I've been about Hood to Coast.

Remember Hood to Coast? This big giant race my husband and I signed up for? The "Mother of all Relays," as it's known? And I haven't even mentioned it on the blog for months now? That's because I've had this fear/excitement combo going on for months now, so I mostly just ignored the fact that I was going to have to stay awake for 36 hours riding in a van with a bunch of dudes, and that I was going to have run over and over again, and that one of my legs was 5.75 miles long and nearly all uphill on gravel roads.

I was excited. I really was. But there was a pretty big portion of dread mixed in with my excitement.

Well you know what? It's over now. It was last weekend. And now I can check it off my list and start bragging about how awesome it was. Because it really was.

In case you're not familiar with Hood to Coast, here's a little background: it's a relay race that starts at Timberline Lodge way up on Mt. Hood, which is east of Portland, all the way to Seaside on the Oregon Coast. It's 197 miles. That's a long way, people. You get together with a group of 11 other people to make a 12-person-team, and you split yourself up into two vans, and you take turns running; sitting all cramped and sweaty in the van; and trying to sleep in the van or out on the ground inbetween stops. They allow 1,000 teams to do this every year. One thousand! That's 12,000 people, plus the massive amount of volunteers required to pull this off. It's huge, crazy, chaotic and fun. If you want to get a feel for what it's like, go watch the trailer for a documentary on the race at www.hoodtocoastmovie.com. It's not exactly an independent documentary, considering that the founder of the race put up part of the money to fund the filming of it, and has admitted to making at least one editorial change to the finished product--but it still looks like a film that does a great job capturing the challenging, zany, fun-filled spirit of the race.

I have been to races where people dressed up and got goofy before, but I was totally blown away by the level of craziness and creativity that a lot of teams put into their race-day attire. Our team was put together by Eric's former workplace, Garmin. They make GPS stuff. Our team name was the Garmin ForeRunners (Forerunner is the name of a product they make, a GPS run-tracker watch, so that was clever!). Our van decorations consisted of big stickers with the Garmin name and logo on them on the side of the van. We all just wore running clothes with shirts that said Garmin. We were probably the absolute most low-key (aka boring) van in the whole race.





There was the superhero team, where everyone dressed up as a different superhero and actually ran while in their capes. There was the van dressed like a wedding party, with all the girls in plastic bridesmaid dresses and all the guys in tuxes. There was a team called "Six Dudes and Twelve Boobs." And "The Hot As Faults." And many, many other names that I can't mention on a family blog. All the costumes and crazy names and decorated vans gave the whole thing of feeling of a giant mobile party.

Except for it was a party where you had to run and sweat and almost die.

To be continued...