Portland to Coast Part 2

Every year the Portland to Coast Relay is it's own experience. You come away with your own stories for things that happened on your leg, things that happened in your van, the weather, the course, the other teams. They all come together and create a crazy memory full of struggles and hardships and victories and triumphs. This year was no more and no less than all of that.

Of all the years I have done this, I have never experienced anything like this one. And there were many reasons that made it a most unique experience.

For one... Roadkill. It is a game a lot of teams play where they count the people they pass along the course (i.e. road kill) and then keep track with some sort of sticker or series of checks on their van. A sign of bravado. It kind of sounds fun but I always think of the people on the course who are there because they are courageous and they are tenacious. They do not have athletic bodies and some struggle with all sorts of health reasons. Some are old, some are heavy, some are blind, some are deaf. They are not road kill. They are people to be admired. People who dare to try great things. Those out walking, they are winners. So that's my bleeding heart stance on that. But the real truth is that no matter how much I train and how hard I run or walk, I am usually the one that is road kill for others.

But on Friday morning I walked the hardest leg I have ever walked in my life and not one single person passed me. The enormity of that had me in tears. Was it because I was awesome? No it was a series of luck and strokes of someones pen... but our team led the race, the WHOLE race for 22 out of 24 legs and the last two legs, we had two teams of race-walkers pass us, twice. We finished 5th in Seaside after the race-walkers (who move fantastically, i might add).

So that is what this is about. Like road kill ... good for the passer and bad for the "passee", being first in the race had some good moments and a lot of bad moments. But first consider... our team started at 3 am. Presumably they chose that time for us because we were considered to be a very slow team, a team that the rest of the teams would easily catch up to and ideally we would all finish in the same 3 hour period in Seaside. When we submitted the times for each of our teammates, we used their minutes per mile that they actually did the prior year. I had two new members that we kind of just guessed on.

So my team begins at 3 am (and that meant that several of them never went to bed the night before) in downtown Portland and quickly distinguished themselves from the pack. Dawn, our front secretary is so quiet. She has some health struggles and training has been hard. And her first leg she lopped off 11 minutes from her time! That means she almost walked more than 2.5 minutes faster for each mile than she had done the year before. She walked strong and put us in a great position.

Alan, her husband who spent his birthday with us also increased our lead. Joe and Roberta, Gayle and Rob each increased our lead so that by the time van #2 took over we were ahead. From there we just increased the margin of distance so that by the time van #2 was done we were more than a mile and a half from our nearest competition. It was rather fun in a very unexpected way

As night fell, we quickly realized that being in the front was not the ideal place after all. We had no illusions that we were actually in FIRST place only that we were leading the race. There is a difference and we still believed that as the night began, other teams would be arriving that would be able to pass us. Sometimes after an exchange we would sit and wait for the next walker to arrive, counting the minutes and figuring out how many miles back the nearest walker was. Apparently, the Portland To Coast people had majorly miscalculated their resource requirements and as we arrived at each exchange point, the toilets were there but little else. Volunteers were scheduled to be arriving up to an hour and a half after we would be thru each exchange. Forks in the road were not marked. No volunteers were present to point us in the right directions.

Usually at night a walker in this event would expect to experience a steady line of vans decorated in whatever team logos with bright lights and usually some shouts of encouragement. Other walkers would be passing them and they too would be passing walkers. Aloneness is not ever an issue during the relay race. But since we were so far in front, we experienced no vans, no other walkers, only black darkness. It was rough.

But here is the thing about working as a team. You get to experience your teammates in the midst of whatever is being faced and find out who they are. Hearing Dawn had walked her first leg at 3 AM, 11 minutes faster than she was supposed to was BIG. Seeing Ted as the survivor man equipped to handle sleeping in the rain, making his tea out on the road. In the race, he is an animal. At one point we were waiting for him to arrive at the next exchange and we did not even recognize him with his bald head covered in a baseball hat and his head down striding for the line, with his happy smile on his face. Bill who had not walked anything over 3 miles in his training not only poured it out for 6 miles on his first leg that started with a gnarly gravel steep climb, but I saw him jumping like a deer to move off the road when the log trucks were barrelling down the twisty windy road. He never skipped a beat. Larry showed us his competitiveness and both he and Valerie were strong strong walkers. But the thing I will always remember is that in the middle of the night when Valerie was going to have to walk 7.75 miles OFF ROAD (meaning the van could not follow) by herself in the black of night with no volunteers around and no other walkers for safety - Larry, exhausted by his own legs, put on his shoes and stepped out into the black rainy night to be with his wife. Valerie is a strong confident walker. If others had been around she would not have needed that kind of support. Larry knew that. He took care of his wife in a way that was over and above. But that is what teams do. (I assume it is a good thing for a husband to do, too :))

Roberta as always .. small and sometimes frail we often forget how very tenacious she is. She gives her all. Joe encourages everyone he sees. Rob and Gayle are strong and athletic. Candace walked hard in the rain as did several others of our group. The rain really added a kink for everyone. Candace and Rob were wonderful at driving which takes extra focus especially when there is no one to follow. It takes us all and that is how we become a team.

I will always be grateful that in the middle of the black night, dark coast range, heavy cloud cover, the night that animals were rustling in the bushes all around, my team with Candace driving followed me and lit my way. I was never alone for long enough to panic.

When you see Bill limping today he will give you some excuse of black toes. They looked awful. As the race wears on, complaining is in the air. I call it righteous complaining. Listen and smile.

So in the end we arrive early. Go home early. Tough race. We win... not because we placed but because we faced adversity as a group and worked thru it. We saw sides of people we don't see while they are pushing paper. And for a team of mostly old (except for Alan..:)) some fat, some with health problems, pencil pushers we stared it and accomplished our goal. And our first year we came in 78th in our division and this year....... we were 14th!!!! Wahoo! Awesome job! DKU