“My father, Bob Foote, loves to run, loves to ski, and enjoys spending time on the Oregon coast,” Felicia Hubber recalled. “Back in 1982, he wanted to figure out a way to combine these activities while creating an opportunity to have a fun running weekend with his friends. He came up with the idea of the Hood to Coast relay and pitched it to the Oregon Road Runners Club. They agreed to produce the first event. That first year, there were eight teams with ten runners each. My dad was an architect and a bit of a perfectionist. He wheel-measured every five-mile increment to determine exactly where the exchange of batons had to occur—even if it was the middle of a busy intersection. At the time, he thought they’d be lucky if it happened a second year. He spent so many all-nighters trying to bring the event off that he felt terrible during the actual running. But everyone had a blast. The race created a sense of camaraderie, friendship, and inspiration beyond expectations. It grew from eight teams in year one, to sixty-four the following year, subsequently 150, 237, 408, and then 500 teams. It was capped at five hundred for a while, but there were so many requests, the capacity was expanded to a limit of 1,050 teams. All this was through word of mouth. A participant might step into a van not knowing everyone on the team; twenty-four hours later, you might have a new best friend or a life partner. Today, the Hood to Coast is the largest relay race in the world.”
The Hood to Coast, held in late August each year, traverses 199 miles. It begins at the highest paved point of the Beaver State’s tallest mountain—Timberline Lodge (6,000 feet) on Mount Hood (11,234 feet)—and continues west, descending through the foothills of the Cascades, crossing the fertile Willamette Valley (including the city of Portland), climbing up and down Oregon’s Coast Range, before reaching the Pacific at the town of Seaside . . . and one of the West Coast’s biggest beach parties. Teams of eight to twelve runners (twelve is most common) divide up thirty-six legs; legs vary from 3.48 to 7.72 miles, and each team member must complete at least three legs. “We get a broad range of runners participating in the Hood to Coast,” Felicia continued. “Some are elite runners; others are weekend joggers who are undertaking the biggest running challenge in their life. While we get a lot of complete teams registering, there are often teams that have places for people who want to run but don’t have a team. [Social media has greatly simplified filling out teams!] Teams can break up the legs as they wish; generally, more seasoned runners are given the more difficult stretches. As one runner is covering his or her leg, the team van goes ahead to the next exchange point. Vans are stocked with snacks and beverages, and teams will listen to music and share stories along the way. Depending on timing, some teams will even stop and have dinner in a restaurant while a leg is being run.”
The Hood to Coast is the world’s largest relay race, covering 199 miles from Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood (shown here) to Seaside.
On the Friday that the relay begins, the first wave of runners takes off from Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood at five A.M. (Timberline Lodge, a marvel of Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps design and construction, might look familiar in the early dawn light; its exterior was used in the Stanley Kubrick thriller The Shining.) Felicia described the events that follow. “Emmy Award–winning reporter John Hammarley is our announcer. He gets the teams amped up as they shoot down the mountain. Runners on that first leg lose two thousand feet in the first 5.5 miles. It can be brutal if you don’t know how to tackle such a downhill. If you run it lighter, you don’t even feel like you’re running. The first four legs of the race are all downhill, through the Mount Hood National Forest. As the sun’s coming up, there’s snow-topped Mount Hood lit up behind you. Around leg six, you come into the town of Sandy, and then you pop out into farmland, rolling terrain with pasture land, and tree farms. By leg eight and the town of Boring, you come to the Springwater Corridor, a former rail line that has been converted to a multiuse trail and leads right into Portland. You cross the Willamette River on the Hawthorne Bridge [one of twelve bridges that cross the river] and then head through an industrial area. As you head west, you’ll pass through a series of small river communities that flank the Columbia River—Linnton, Scappoose, St. Helens [which looks across the Columbia to the volcano of the same name that erupted in 1980]. Many schools in these towns hold fund-raisers at this time, offering food, showers, or sleeping accommodations, and they are patronized by our participants.
“Once you’ve gotten past St. Helens, you come into a thickly forested area of the course as you head into the Coast Range. Night has fallen, and some stretches of the road here are gravel. There are no neighborhoods, no streetlights. It can be pitch-black, though we require participants to have reflective vests and front and back flashlights. For team members who are running this leg, it can be a very Zen experience. You almost feel like you’re running in a black hole. The fastest teams are coming out of the Coast Range just as the sun is rising. Runners descend into the town of Seaside, run twelve blocks on the Seaside Promenade parallel to the Pacific, then cut down to the finish line on the beach. The first finishers come in around seven A.M.; the last team is generally in by eight P.M. There’s a massive beach party at the run’s conclusion—sixty thousand to seventy thousand people—with local beer, wines, and live music. Even though people have been up for thirty-six hours, they’re dancing, running on endorphins.”
Felicia has attended more than thirty Hood to Coasts, notching her first when she was three months old. One of her most powerful memories is of the first time her husband ran the event with her. “My husband is a non-runner, but he wanted to experience the event before he came to work for the race,” she said. “We assembled a group of friends; he ran the shortest legs, and he was handing off to me for each of our three rotations. My husband has MS, so it was very important for him to do this. He completed them all and was on his last leg—leg thirty-two—which comes just after you come out of the Coast Range. He was coming up a hill to exchange and hand off to me, limping with tiredness as he approached the handoff. It was a breathtaking moment, as I could see the mix of agony and pride on his face in having accomplished such a monumental endeavor. I think that’s how many people feel in taking on the Hood to Coast.”
FELICIA HUBBER has been president of the Hood to Coast organization since 2006. An avid runner, she has participated in the race six times and has attended or assisted in the race for thirty-two of the thirty-five years it has been in existence. The first leg of the race is Felicia’s favorite, and she climbed to the peak of Mount Hood a month before the Hood to Coast for inspiration. Felicia began running at age nine and has calculated that her lifetime mileage is equivalent to nearly one and a half times the circumference of the earth. She treks abroad regularly and makes a point to eat Indian food and run in every country she visits.
Getting There: Portland is served by most major carriers. Alaska Airlines (800-2527522; alaskaair.com) offers discounted air travel for the event.
Best Time to Visit: The Hood to Coast is generally held the last weekend in August. Portland has clement weather most of the year, though November through April is often wet.
Race Information: The Hood to Coast usually fills up the day registration opens, though spots are almost always available for runners without a team. Visit hoodtocoast relay.com for details.
Accommodations: Travel Portland (travelportland.com) lists lodging options around the Rose City for the race’s start. The City of Seaside Visitors Bureau (seasideor.com) details lodging near the finish. Travel Oregon (traveloregon.com) is a clearinghouse for lodging throughout the state.
