PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) — On Friday, Aug. 23, the 43rd annual Hood to Coast Relay kicked off at the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon. The relay takes runners through 200 miles of picturesque Pacific Northwest countryside, weaving through the Columbia River Gorge and the Cascade mountains before ending at the Oregon Coast.
Established in 1982 with 80 participants, Hood to Coast has since ballooned in popularity and now draws in around 20,000 runners each year. In 1992, organizers changed the endpoint from Pacific City to Seaside, Oregon — adding about 40 miles to the race.
According to COO Dan Floyd, the relay has sold out every year for 36 consecutive years. The organizing company, Portland-based Foote Sports Productions, has expanded on that success with Hood to Coast races in China, Taiwan, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
“It started out as this tiny, fun thing that was probably going to be short-lived, and now it has this cult following,” said Floyd, who participated in the relay before making it a career. “We have participants from all 50 states and 40-plus countries.”
To join the race, teams must first make it through “Lottery Day” — a one-day registration window that opens 11 months before the event, in which around 60,000 people try to get into the 20,000 available spots.
That lottery gives preferential treatment to people who have been denied in previous years. Because the event always sells out, Floyd recommends applying more than once. Fundraising teams get automatic entries, as do those who have purchased memberships. This year’s race raised $930,000 for Oregon’s Providence Cancer Institute.
Portland resident Kai Miller has been running in Hood to Coast ever since his younger brother passed away in an accident eight years ago. For the 2024 race, he headed his own team, which brought in friends and family from Oregon and beyond.
Among those friends were Alexander Quezada and Elyta Meas. Quezada had gotten close to Miller through his running club in Portland.
“We all ran because of him,” Quezada said. It was Quezada’s and Meas’ first time running Hood to Coast.
Start times are staggered, with many teams beginning the race in the middle of the night.
As with any relay race, participants take turns running. On Miller’s team, the first van of runners started at Mount Hood just before midnight. Van 2, which held Miller and his friends from the run club, met them around 5 a.m. at an exchange point in the town of Sandy, six legs and about 36 miles from the start.
Meas, runner seven, was first up in Van 2. An Oregon rain began right before she started, washing the decorations off their van.
Meas’ first stint took her 5.25 miles through rolling hills and paved farm roads. The sun was coming up, and the beauty of the scene kept her going, she said later.
From Mount Hood and Portland to the Coast Range and the Oregon coast, the relay highlights some of the most beautiful features of the Beaver State.
For organizers like Floyd, it’s an opportunity to promote Oregon to potential tourists and visitors. “Coming out of COVID, you probably hear the negative rap that Portland can get,” he said. “It’s good to showcase a different side of that, and to show people how beautiful things are.”
The team switched off until Quezada, runner twelve. With his first stint, he brought the team into Portland.
His leg included 5.85 miles along the Springwater Corridor Trail in southeast Portland, where the run club had frequently trained. When he finished, every runner on their team had run once, and the team had completed the first third of the race — 32.55 miles. The runners from Van 2 took a few hours to rest and recover as Van 1 ran their second section, and then it was time for Meas to run again.
Meas started her second leg around 2 a.m., weaving 5.89 miles through the backroads of St. Helens.
“It’s really dark and in the middle of the woods,” Meas recalled later. While runners have headlamps and chestlights, they’re little match for the dark Oregon forests. “I liked the other two legs, but the night one was hard.”
“The first leg feels like a normal run, like what you trained for,” Miller concurred. “The second — the night one — is crazy.”
“I don’t know how to describe it,” he added. “You feel crazy.” By the time teams reach the third and final leg, “you’ve been living in a van for a day and a half,” he said. Runners are sore, and “that one’s very driven by willpower: ‘I’m just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other until I’m done running.’”
Relays take the solitary act of running and turn it into a team sport, Floyd said. Working together for up to 36 hours, teams of 12 do their best to traverse 200 miles of Oregon countryside.
It’s the kind of feat that creates lifetime memories — and over eleven years working with Hood to Coast, Floyd has witnessed some magic moments. Marriage proposals at the finish line. Blind participants running with a guide. A team of veterans who carried a large American flag the entire 200 miles, passing it off at each exchange point.
As runner twelve, Quezada finished off the race for Miller’s team with a five mile stretch into the town of Seaside.
It was now Saturday. Both vans cheered him on as he crossed the finish line. A metal timing chip on his shirt marking the exact time the team finished their 32 hours of constant running.
The team was exhausted but happy. They’d placed 577th and were already planning to run again in 2025.“It was really nice to finish that last leg,” Quezada said as he caught his breath and looked down the coast in the direction he’d run from. “I know where soul meets body: It’s in the last leg of Hood to Coast.”