Paper: The San Diego Union-Tribune
Title: Ready to run
Stay-at-home mom takes on challenging relay
Date: October 27, 2000

Not only does she have more than enough athletic shoes to wear a different pair each day of the week, but Janice Riedel keeps a log so that she knows how many miles she has run in each pair.  Perhaps that's the kind of love for running that led her and 11 other San Diego women to the finish line in the nation's largest and most grueling relay.Riedel and fellow San Diego Track Club members were the fourth women's team to finish this year's Hood to Coast, a 195-mile relay starting 6,000 feet up Mt. Hood and ending on the Oregon coast.

"When you finish, it's just ... wow!" said Riedel, 37.  "You all stink.  You're tired, you're sore, you're hungrybut it's fun!"

Fun is what it's about for Riedel.  She began running track in her freshman year of high school and hasn't stopped since.  She was running three hours before she gave birth to her first daughter.  A second daughter and workRiedel is a mechanical engineermade running difficult for a time.  Now, with her daughters old enough4 and 6to attend school and with her new career as a stay-at-home mom, she has returned to running.

The Hood to Coast race is broken into 36 four- to eight-mile legs.  Each of the 12 team members run three legs over the course of the race which, for some teams, lasted almost 36 hours.  Lucent Legs (the San Diego team named for its major sponsor, Lucent Technologies) ran the course in 22 hours, 45 minutes.  They finished 74th overall and fourth among women's teams.

"I put my heart and soul into this," Riedel said.

As team captain, she filled out the paperwork, arranged transportation, talked to sponsors and event coordinators, and trained daily for the event.  And she ran the rugged course despite an injured muscle in her right thigh.

"I just tried to pick out the legs that were more uphill, because that didn't hurt as much," she said.

Completing the Oregon run was worth it, she said, even though further aggravating her injury meant she would not be able to run for the next few months.

The 12-woman team represented a range of experience, age, and lifestyle.  One woman began running only three years ago, while another began when she was 11 years old.  There were a few mothers in the group, as well as a UC San Diego graduate student in cognitive science, and a drummer in a rock band.

The women's ages ranged from mid-20s to late 40s.

Despite that, "there's such a camaraderie there," Riedel said.  She said that's the kind of bond that exists within San Diego's running community, a relatively small group which meets at races and marathons.

Riedel and her husband are considering having a third child.  That may rewrite her plans for next year but, she said, she plans to make it back to Mt. Hood.

Jeffrey M. Barker is a free-lance writer who lives in San Diego.  Do you have a story idea for Rancho Bernardo?  Contact Shay McKinley at (760) 752-6795 or e-mail shay.mckinley@uniontrib.com