Paper: Tennessean, The (Nashville, TN)
Title: HOOD TO COAST A CHALLENGE
Date: August 20, 2001

By KIM SWINTRunners love to torture themselves and then party afterwards.


Take the Hood to Coast, a 24-hour, 196-mile race where runners team up in groups of 12, taking turns running -- all day and all night.


The grueling race finishes on the coast, where a full-blown beach party is taking place. With little or no sleep, team members join the anchor runner on the last leg of the race. The group crosses the finish line and joins the other 9,600 runners in jamming to a live band and celebrating their successful completion of the unique event.


"Each person runs about five miles, three different times," said Vicki Crisp, a Belle Meade veterinarian who will participate in the event. The race takes place Saturday on Mt. Hood in Oregon and finishes on the coast at Seaside.


"It's the most fun you can ever have running. It's something about being on a team and surviving the race together."


Crisp, 41, is on an elite mixed masters team (male and female runners age 40 and up), which includes John Tuttle, currently the top masters runner in the U.S., and local runner Shannon Reade, who will attempt the relay for her first time. Two years ago, their team finished second out of 800 teams, breaking the masters course record by finishing in less than 20 hours.


"Crazy things can happen during the race, like one time we had to stop and wait for a train to pass," said Crisp, who is usually the only Middle Tennessee runner to attend the Hood to Coast event. "When those things happen, you don't get compensated for the lost time."


There's also sleep deprivation and trying to figure out what to eat before, during and after each run. Not to fear, however, plenty of port-o-potties line the course, so your van can drop you off at one, go check and wait for the next exchange of runners to pick you back up.


Still with all its quirks, runners find the course absolutely beautiful to view and the race itself is a complete blast.


"I am very excited about it," said Reade, a Gallatin runner who will join Crisp on her masters team.


"It's quite an honor to get to go. It's a very diverse team, with runners from all over -- Virginia, Utah, Illinois. Everyone on our team has been running for 20-plus years.


"The only other thing I've done halfway close to this is the River Relay, which Vicki [Crisp] also did, but it was a shorter distance. Instead of running six miles each leg, we only ran three, so this should be even more exciting and fun."


With so many teams, there is a staggered start. Some begin Friday morning, some start Friday afternoon, while others won't start until Friday night. Mixed in with the enormous field will be local runners Matt Pulle, Eric Legros and Maureen Manning.


"We're starting Friday night," said Pulle, a former Vanderbilt University runner. "The race goes to the 25th (Saturday), unless we do really poorly. Then I guess it could go to the 26th (Sunday), but last year the team Eric and I are on finished the race in about 19 hours.


"We don't know the other 10 members -- we've only communicated with them through e-mail. Basically, we just wanted to do the race, so I called the race director and he hooked us up with them. Maureen is on another team.


Pulle and Legros' team is sponsored by Texaco and came in 15th overall, in last year's race.


"I'm curious to see how I'm going to be able to run fives miles, three times, in a span of 20 hours and see what it's like to run at two in the morning. How I'm going to sleep, how I'm going to eat. I'm sort of wondering how it's all going to work out, but I think it will be fun -- one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.


"Hopefully it will work out without any of us having to go to the hospital or die of exhaustion in the streets of Portland [Oregon]."


Coming up: Thursday -- Nashville Strider Cross-Country Series, 6:30 p.m., contact 279-9971 Saturday -- GAP United Way 5K Kickoff in Gallatin, contact 451-1977 Smyrna Parks 5K, contact 459-9710.