Hood to Coast 2016

 Hood to Coast...the Mother of all relays. It is epic and I was lucky enough to do it for the second year in a row on Lark's team, Go Fight Winn! in honor of her friend Teddy who kicked cancers ass!
It is the most fun you will ever have...in a van, with 5 other people, for nearly 30 hours straight.
Seriously.
Each team has 12 people, 2 vans (6 in each van) and you relay from Mt. Hood to the beach. Each runner has 3 legs they run and you don't stop until you cross the finish line. It's exhausting, amazing, inspirational, and just an incredible experience. One I can't put into words, but trust me when I say you need to add this to your bucket list!

The race started off on a Friday and it was brutally hot. So hot that people were passing out all over the place and being taken away in ambulances.
Alright, so maybe I'm not doing the best job of selling it, but it gets better.
So, it's 100 degrees out and most of our legs don't have shade. We decide as a team to take it super slow, and encourage each runner to walk when we needed. If possible, we meet the runner half way to give them more water.
On my run, all the houses I passed had their sprinklers on and turned toward the street for us which was incredible and saved me for sure. There were even people sitting out front with water to give us. Bless these peoples hearts, I think it saved quite a few people.
I'm happy to report we all stayed vertical and no one passed out. Dusty ensured his success by wearing as little as possible. Although, even in cold temperatures he doesn't like to run with clothes...

 Yep, those are literally his shorts. Not a diaper, but shorts. And yes, he got many looks haha! He's such a good sport about it, we all gave him such a hard time but he knows we love him.
Although my first run in the heat was brutal, my second was at midnight and it was nice and cool.

 After that I was able to try and sleep while my van continued their second runs. My stomach always aches and burns after my first two runs, I think it's my bodies way of telling me to take a chill. But after laying down for awhile it goes away. Once my whole van was done we parked and slept for a good 2 hours. Yep, 2 hours of sleep and then we were ready to go again and finish our last leg and run into the beach!

Paul handing off to Amanda for her last leg!

 This exchange had hot dogs and oh my word we were thrilled. Will (Lark's awesome brother) and I devoured our hot dogs with a delicious Coors Light, and as soon as Paul was done with his last leg we handed him his long awaited cheeseburger.

So happy for cheeseburger time!

 So, Amanda was off and the last person in our van to run was Dusty. He got to run our team to the finish line which is exciting...but not when the rest of your van is done and enjoying their beer while you have to prep for your next run...

Best photo. And yes, this was staged :)

Libby and I celebrating!

 Eventually Dusty ran in and they actually have you wait on the side so your whole entire team can gather and cross together. It was incredible and such an amazing accomplishment.
The fabulous part is that we are supported by Nike (most of the team works at Nike) so we got to get into their section at the beach with free food and drinks.

Team Go Fight Winn!

 We were all tired and sore but still able to celebrate our amazing accomplishment.

Hopefully we get picked from the lottery again and invited back next year because I absolutely love it!!!