Hood to Coast Leg #3 aka Leg #30

We're almost there!  You've almost made it to the end of my never-ending marathon posts about Hood to Coast!  Don't worry, persevere - you can do it. 

Where we last left off we had grabbed a bit of sleep at the last major exchange.  Some slept in the van on the way there - since I had just run I was still all hopped up on adrenaline and couldn't sleep.  Once we got there I opted to just sleep in the van - while some others slept in the field.  Since it was now daylight and quite hot by the time we woke up it was a bit difficult do simulate night! 

And finally it was morning - Team Morning's true time to shine!  :-)

Check out those awesome Tough Chik arm warmers - I wore mine on the night leg only since it was hot and sadly didn't get a picture. 

I've mentioned it before but I can't reiterate enough how I think starting so late (we started at 2:30pm) hindered our experience a bit.  I feel like we missed out on some of the "crazy" of Hood to Coast - the atmosphere - seeing all the costumes and crazy van decorations, etc.  The good thing was that we missed out on traffic, but we were literally less than 30 minutes ahead of the VERY LAST RUNNER.  We could hear them on their walkie talkies saying "Exchange 27 now closed" when we were only at Exchange 29!  That's not good.

Here, for example, is one of the exchanges, a freaking ghost town:

But I digress.  That was really the only negative thing of the whole weekend so how can you possibly complain?!?!?

And then it was time for me to run my 3rd and final leg!  Looking at the elevation map it looked like after I made it about halfway I was good to go - it was smooth sailing downhill to the finish.  So I kind of overlooked this leg and figured this would be my easiest leg by far. 

Nope. 

Ready to go!

Saturday, August 25, 2:00pm
Another jaunt down the road through the middle of nowhere this time.  The road was curving with no shoulder so it was a bit scary going around the blind spots because a car coming your way would easily hit you before they saw you. 

The scenery on this leg was GORGEOUS though.  Through the forest and pure loveliness. 

 

Again, I totally underestimated the difficulty of this leg.  Although it looks straight downhill, (and it was - very steep downhill for one mile that wrecked havoc on your quads) - it was still quite rolling after that so I was wrong to think it was only downhill to the finish.  Lots more hills to contend with!

Total Distance: 5.3 miles   Total Time: 40:21   Average Pace: 7:37
Splits: 8:05, 7:48, 7:31, 7:25, 7:25, 6:51 (.3)

Total elevation gain of 162 feet, total loss of 667 feet

Look at all those 7's!  This time I mixed it up by passing 2 people but only getting passed by 1 person (probably because Molly was already ahead of me and didn't get a chance to pass me for a 3rd time!).  So to recap, the ENTIRE race of 17 miles I only passed 6 people and got passed by 5 (2 of those 5 being Molly).  Again - you were ALONE when you were running. 

But I was so thankful while I was out there to BE out there - to be running Hood to Coast, to be running with this fabulous group of women, to be running with this amazing company.  I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

But then I was done!  And that meant the WHOLE TEAM was done!  YIPPEE!  We had survived! 

We're finally all done!

I loved my van so much - they were the best group of girls and best driver in the world.  I'm so lucky I got to hang out with them in a sweaty van for 30+ hours! 

Come back tomorrow for the final epic conclusion - the beach party!