Hood to Coast

What Hood to Coast is NOT:
-A trail some tree hugger treks each year
-A rap song about the homeboy Richards clan (wouldn't even know where to start)
-Wearing a hoodie while you snorkle...
-The latest Oregon Rain gear (environmentally friendly of course)
-Something I want to do again in the next 350 days

What is it really?

A 197 mile relay race from Mt. Hood to the Oregon coast. Twelve people to a team and over 1000 teams participating. Imagine traffic jams, no sleep, sweaty runners, and way to many crazy people torturing themselves to finish the race.

But we had a blast....

Heddie, my sister, came up and showed us how the pros do it. At one point I even heard someone say, "Dang she's fast! She's even faster than when she started!"

Above you can see the cheering squad at the end of our first run. The whole family made it!

Below is our team. I'll tell you, by the end of this race I knew everyone very well...


What a great time...if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend it.

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Running!!!

On Saturday I, Ezra, ran the Helvetia Half Marathon for one of my New Years resolutions. You probably remember the post on my training log.

Let me just say that I had a blast and I’m already looking for another. Lisa thinks I’m crazy but I’d like to find a marathon sometime in September or October. Unfortunately, almost everything lands on a Sunday, unless I want to go race above the oxygen zone in Utah. If you know of a good one, let me know.

So how did I do?

I finished in 1:52:46. A 8.5 minute per mile pace throughout the 13.1 miles. I had done a very long training run (11 miles) the week before and then did a 4 mile sprint a few days later so unfortunately I was a bit sore during most of the run. Oh well. The race felt great and it was an awesome environment to be in. Even better, the race was very well organized and was actually quite peaceful—even with the scores of racers puffing up the hills.

Now if you really like math…stick around…

A short time after the race, I noticed that the times of all finishers and all kids of other data was posted to the website. So of course, the math geek in me was curious to know how well I really did. So I tabulated the frequency and created a distribution showing the finishing times of all runners.



What does this mean?

It shows the number of people that finished at any given time. My overall finishing place was 503rd out of 2607 runners. Or rather, my time fell in the column identified with the red arrow. The good news was that I was slightly better than average for the runners (assuming most of the finishers after 2:50:00 were walkers).

But wait!

Then I was looking at the data, I noticed a 66 year old guy and over 160 women beat me (no joke!). So as I was feeling washed up I noticed that the age groups were listed as well!



A few short clicks and I came up with the distribution above showing how well I did against the males in my age group. I still finished better than half of all runners in my age group who ran the race, but not by much. Again, the tail trailing to the right was most likely made up of walkers. Shaving just 15 seconds off each mile would easily take me into top 25% of runners.

What have I learned?

Buy new shoes and training makes all the difference. Also, next time I run a race I plan to have a goal to shoot for—not just a plan to finish the race.

If anyone is out there and wants to go for a run…just give me a call!

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Ezra's Run

One of my typical New Years resolutions is to exercise more, but I always seem to fall short of the level I would like to be at. I also firmly believe that "what gets measured, gets done"... So if I could some how measure my progress and have all my friends bug me about keeping my goal, I will somehow succeed. Right?

And so I signed up for a half marathon.

Now how will I measure it? Click here. Each time I run, I'm going to log my time and miles in this handy little spreadsheet. Then I can easily compare that to the plan I found at some fanatical runners site selling spandex (not going to happen) and $200 shoes (Looking for the right excuse).

Occasionally, I'll publish a little graph, like the one below, showing how I'm doing.

The spreadsheet also shows the course I ran (find the web address to the right) and other bits and pieces of data that I'll collect along the way.

I expect to start slow...hey I just had surgery...and I doubt I'll ever hit the 25 miles per week, but at least I've committed to all my friends and the www that I'm going to finally get into shape...or kill myself running 13.1 miles.

Now, to make this work, I need everyone to bug me about it and I need your motivational support.

And how can I get people to help me?

If you leave a short motivational quote or comment, I'll write it on a white t-shirt that I'll wear on race day... Ok, that sounds kind of cheesy, but if you think its a good idea, let me know and I'll still think about it.

Either way ... help me! I need motivation!

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