My Hood to Coast interview is live!



Hood to Coast is comin' to town
“The Adventure of a Lifetime” winds its way through Sandy on Friday

By Michael Cade
The Sandy Post, Aug 21, 2007,

On Friday morning, Aug. 24, the world's healthiest-looking mob will descend upon Sandy, as the 26th annual Hood to Coast Relay storms into the area.

That is great news for the Sandy Fred Meyer, which serves as a resupply point for nearly everyone involved with the run.

"Basically, everything they're looking for will be up front," says store director Greg Monda, "so they don't really have to go out and hunt for it."

Monda says the store begins preparations early in the week and stacks supplies well in advance.

And race participants are extremely appreciative of how easy Fred Meyer makes it for racers to procure their most coveted items.

"You're expecting to really search for everything you need," says runner Sarah Gilbert, "(but) you walk in at 6 in the morning and everything you need — van paint, vests and head lamps — is just sitting there on display."

Gilbert, a Portland mom who gave birth a mere six weeks ago, is part of a Hood to Coast group called Run Mama Run whose theme — as you might have guessed — is motherhood.

She says she has adequately recovered from the pain and stress of childbirth, despite badly injuring her tailbone during labor.

But even with a full recovery, she traded her place on the leg's first race — downhill from Timberline Lodge — with teammate Larissa Brown.

"It really hurts when I go downhill fast," she says. "So that's why I switched legs with Larissa."

Brown and Gilbert offer living proof that the race is no standard jock-a-thon.

Gilbert is a financial blog manager for AOL, and Brown is releasing her second book in 2008, "Knitalong," which she co-wrote with husband Martin John Brown.

"It's about the phenomenon of people online knitting together," she says, "and it's about the social history of knitting. And then it has knitting patterns in it."

She notes that the Run Mama Run roster is one that gets juggled pretty frequently, for reasons one might expect.

"With this team," she says, "it's always who's pregnant, who's dropping out because they got pregnant. That's how I got in last year."

Jason Goodmanson, 31, of Tacoma, Wash., isn't filling in for any pregnant moms, but as a rookie participant, he's thrilled — and a little bit nervous — to be involved with Hood to Coast.

A scuba-diving enthusiast who spends much of his free time underwater in the Seattle-Tacoma area, Goodmanson recently took up running as a hobby.

He says initially, the prospects of a 197-mile Hood to Coast race were quite daunting.

"The scary thing," he says, "is the distance involved in a short period of time. I'll do 17-plus miles in a day and a half — which isn't that bad — but the fact is, you're not getting a comfortable night's sleep. You're riding in a van."

The chance to share pavement time with elite runners has also proven to be a huge motivator for Goodmanson.

"My friend Kristie^[1] mentioned the elite runners — you'll hear them coming from the distance, " he says. "You'll be running with them for about a half a second, and then they're gone. But at least I can say I ran with somebody of some stature."

The race culminates with what the Hood to Coast Web site calls the "largest beach party on the West Coast."

Thousands of people are expected to join the festivities at the race's end in Seaside.

"The more I've read about (the race)," says Goodmanson, "and listened to other runners that I know that have done it, it's supposed to be the highlight of anything you ever do."