Hood to Coast 42 Days Away: The Course

I've been asked where exactly are we running in this race? Easy, we are running from Mt. Hood to the Pacific Ocean. It's a course which weaves 197 miles through the northwest part of Oregon.

Elevation changes are fairly extreme. The infamous first leg of the race has you descending 2500 ft. Yes, 2500ft down!

Now for the casual person it's easy to run downhill. It isn't. It's very hard on the body to run downhill, especially at that steep a decline.

We will run on roads, trails, gravel, dirt, all kinds of terrain. We will encounter solitude and big city. We will run through the woods, and in wide open spaces. We will see a snow capped mountain, and squish our feet in the sand at the ocean. The course is varied and diverse.

Since I don't live out there, training for whatever comes my way is not easy. In fact, I can't. So my training has involved lots of rolly and hilly runs. I've run twice a day a few times. I've worked on speed, but mostly on endurance and feeling good during my run.

My team won't win. Sorry to break that to them. We won't. We will see some marvelous sites. We'll meet new people along the way. We will run Hood to Coast!

Charlie