Paper: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Title: FUN ON THE HOOD-TO-COAST
Date: August 16, 1987

At 8:52 p.m. Friday night, an unexpected surge of wind jerked the blanket of clouds off the mountain, revealing the peak to the nervous crowd shivering in the Timberline Lodge parking lot.


No one applauded the view. They were all facing downhill, toward the darkness, toward the coast. Even Spuds MacKenzie, the giant, dog-shaped Bud Lite balloon, simply sighed (a slow leak) and sagged a little more in the chilly night air.For the last two hours, groups of runners had been leaving every 20 minutes in the sixth annual Hood-to-Coast relay. The 11-person teams headed for victory lane wouldn't leave for two hours yet: Now teeing off were the masochists, the self-motivators, the unfortunate victims of jogging whimsy and . . . the Girl Scouts.


Alice Gregoire, a 30-year veteran of Scouting, first sent her girls up the mountain in 1984. ``None of those girls had ever run. They weren't track stars, or sports-minded,'' Gregoire remembered. ``They were just used to trying different things and pushing themselves. Setting a goal and achieving it.


``I knew to suggest just a race wasn't challenge enough,'' Gregoire said. So she suggested Hood-to-Coast. The ultimate Oregon relay, with 11 runners each running three 5-mile legs, over hill and dale, through the night and against the traffic, bound with their baton for the beach.West Linn's Troop 500 not only finished their first relay, they returned every year to run again. Gregoire and 10 girls from 14 to 21 call themselves ``the Phantom 500.'' ``It's their version of a camp-out,'' said Bob Foote, who created the race. ``It really kills these poor little girls.''


Foote is misinformed. Most of the team members now run track or cross-country. Nancy Schultz, their lead-off runner, is a rising junior at Lakeridge. She knows the first leg is a killer -- four twisting miles straight downhill, premeditated murder on the knees -- and she knows why she's running it: ``Because I've never done this before.''


There's a first time for everything, and this first time in her everything begins at 9 p.m. When the Phantom 500 vans, the support vehicles carrying the rest of the team, leave the parking lot, the fog has returned in a swarming mist.


Schultz is already a mile down the hill. The Girl Scouts have 167 miles to go. No wonder Spuds MacKenzie looks so deflated.


GABRIEL PARK (MILE 69) -- Dawn caught Suzie Henderson, an 18-year-old sophomore at Santa Clara, just shy of the Sellwood Bridge, handing the baton to Marie Dunn for the torturous run to Gabriel Park.


After her first leg, Nancy Schultz was heard to say, ``That was fun,'' later explaining, ``That didn't feel like four miles, but I like my legs better at night.''Through the night, each exchange point was an oasis of minivans and lights, but with the dawn the numbing loneliness of long-distance running has begun to set in.


At Gabriel Park, at Southwest 45th and Vermont Avenue in Portland, Gregoire said the team was running 30 minutes behind its estimated finish time of 9:30 p.m. ``Barring any accidents or problems -- and we've had problems every year -- they should do better than that,'' she said.


Because of injuries along the way, an angry blister or a strained hamstring, Suzie Henderson has had to run a fourth leg each of the last three years. ``Everyone is hurting so badly, it's `Is anyone else alive?' You mumble something and you're it. You're so numb you don't feel the fourth leg.''


Each year, Henderson has run the final 4.9-mile leg into Pacific City and onto Cape Kiwanda. The Phantom 500 was the last team to finish in 1984 and 1985. No one was waiting to congratulate them. ``The first time, there was just a table and an empty bottle of Perrier,'' Henderson said. ``The second time, the (finish) sign was still up but the table was empty except for some corn.


``We're trying to make it before the gate closes, while the party is still going on.''


PACIFIC CITY (MILE 168) -- They ran while we slept, while we dunked our Danish in our morning coffee and cued the cartoons for our kids. While we prepared for harmonic convergence, took a Bite out of Portland or snoozed through the Mets-Cubs game, they ran on, out Farmington and over Bald Peak, through Yamhill and out Meadow Lake Road. For the Phantom 500, Jennifer Dunn leads the assault past Fan Creek; Susie Sotka, the youngest runner at 14, the cruise around Rocky Bend; and Julia Hecht the dash through Sand Lake.Or so the schedule reads. At 10:45 p.m. Saturday night, the party is going on big time -- even Spuds is here, full of spunk and hot air -- but the Phantom 500 has yet to arrive.


Most of the teams are running the final mile together into the park, then posing for group pictures on the beach. The Crazy 8's are on stage, drowning out the surf. A lot of sore muscles are soaking in cold beer. ``Please remember,'' a race official announces. ``If you must drink, don't surf.''


But the bash at the end of Ash-to-Splash isn't the same without the Girl Scouts. There is some consolation in knowing that wherever they are on their 168-mile odyssey, they are out there together.


``A lot of people run 10 K's,'' Suzie Henderson said. ``This is a lot more fun than running for yourself, by yourself.''


>From the looks of things, some of the fun may never end.