Paper: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR) Title: KILLER B'S STING HOOD TO COAST Date: August 25, 1991 Summary: The B's wax their opponents on a beeline to a honey of a record fifth win in the annual 192.7-mile relay LIBRARY NOTE: The list of results of participants in this race was published in the Scoreboard column of the Tuesday, August 27, 1991 Sports section of The Oregonian. If the men's open division Killer B's had kept a diary of their winning Hood to Coast Relay this year, it would have sounded suspiciously like a Stephen King novel.*One of the B's vans got lost. So did B's runner Mike Lynes, a Hillsboro Junior High physical education teacher. ``I probably went five minutes out of my way,'' Lynes said. ``I heard my guys screaming, `Wrong way! Wrong way! Turn around!' '' *Team captain Greg Gustafson, the old man of this squad at 36, injured his Achilles tendon. Gustafson kept going, of course. To him, running is like breathing. *Don Stearns blew an arch. *Terry Perrault, already hobbling, tore a calf muscle. *Leadoff runner Kevin Cathcart turned suicidal, cranking out a 4:06 first mile on leg one, the almost vertical drop from Timberline Lodge. ``After that, his legs were just hamburger,'' teammate Kevin Olson said. ``He could hardly walk, let alone run.'' All this, and the sweet taste of victory besides. The Killer B's made the Seaside turnaround in 16 hours, 57 minutes, 13 seconds. Retire the trophy, if there is one. The B's have now ruled the Hood to Coast Relay, which is sponsored by The Oregonian, a record five times. They've got more road kills than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Exterminated last year by an all-star squad called Black Flag, the B's swarmed back in the 10th Hood to Coast, squashing chief rivals Asics Tigers from Seattle and the Boho Bee Killers from Portland. The nation's largest road running relay brought more than 9,000 participants and their families to the beach at Seaside on a warm, sunny, windy day that turned chilly later on. Well into the night, the Hood to Coast Beach Party raged on, fueled by music from Johnny Limbo and the Lugnuts. There was dancing, traditional and cajun food, and plenty of refreshments to quench even the most exhausted runner's thirst. Asics was slightly better than the Killer B's on paper, based on 8-kilometer times turned in, but this race is won on the road. Asics' lead runner, Dave Dunham, cramped up on Leg 1 from Timberline, giving the Killer B's a surprising 3-minute lead they never would relinquish. While Dunham was dead in his tracks, getting an emergency massage, Cathcart was hoofing it to the first exchange zone where Gustafson was waiting to really pour it on. ``(Dunham) was ahead of me the first half mile, then I was ahead of him and then when it got a little flat I surged,'' Cathcart said. ``I didn't hear him after that. Next thing I know, a van's coming by and they tell me he's walking. They told me to slow down.'' One of the Hood to Coast's sacred edicts involves Leg 1, on which haste not only makes waste, it destroys a runner's quadriceps and calves. ``You can slide down that thing in 4:20 or 4:30,'' said Gustafson, who should know. ``But your quads can blow up in three miles, and running on stumps is not a pretty sight.'' So what on earth was Cathcart doing, going 4:06 on his opening mile? Would he have to finish his other two legs in a wheelchair? ``We asked Kevin not to take a huge lead,'' said Gustafson, a former Spokane Falls Community College All-American who manages the Athletics East running store in Gresham. ``Kevin's 4:06 on a steep downhill is way too fast normally, but he'd practiced for it. He's got good-size quads and he knew what he was doing.'' When the Killer B's started at 7:20 p.m. Friday, they were pumped to the gills, expecting the fight of their lives over the next 16 hours. ``Everybody was panicking at the Lodge,'' Gustafson said. ``Asics should have been the favorites over us. They listed their 12 guys and all of the 8K times were better than ours. ``We saw the lineup they had, and we thought, `Oh no!' I guess some of those times may have come in April and May, during the heat of the track season.'' Asics had perhaps the toughest runner in the field in ex-University of Oregon steeplechaster Carlton ``Buck'' Jones, who may be the sorest man in Seaside Sunday morning. Jones had given up two weeks of a lucrative European track and field tour just to run with his buddies and try to kill the B's. Because of Dunham's cramping problems, Jones ran four legs instead of three. Asics inched within a minute of the lead after Leg 3, a fast effort from fourth-ranked Canadian marathoner Phil Nichols. But this one was over. The final margin was 17 minutes, enough of a cushion to allow the last Killer B -- Mike McManus -- the chance to meet his mates at the Fifth Avenue turn-in so they could cross the finish line en masse. There was no rush. Gustafson did several television interviews before Asics bounded over the horizon. ``They had a history of going out real fast and then maybe dying a little at the end,'' Gustafson said of the Asics runners. ``When their guy blew, we changed our strategy. We thought we might as well make them chase us for a long time to the point where they would get discouraged and say that's enough of that.'' The closest call seemed to be Lynes' nighttime detour around Schaffer Road. Another incident occurred when Olson arrived at an exchange area, only to find that there was no runner to greet him. One of the vans was AWOL. It was around midnight, and in the light of a beautiful full moon Olson could be heard screaming his team number -- 706 -- so the driver would locate his position. Lynes' excursion, which required him to backtrack uphill to reach the course, allowed Asics to pull within 5 minutes. ``We were scared then,'' said Olson, a Gresham resident. ``When you're burying somebody, you've got to put them away. You can't let them back in it. Those guys (Asics) knew they were within 5 minutes and all of a sudden they all got excited.'' The excitement died down. Ed Jassmann of Lincoln City broke up the party with a strong leg. McManus put the icing on the cake. The Killer B's proved that they could be a formidable opponent despite injuries and wrong turns. All Asics could do at the end was offer a salute. Near the finish line, Gustafson's van driver, Penny Brower, looked incredibly fresh considering she had been up since 5:30 a.m. Friday. ``Usually, I run the race,'' Brower said. ``I'm ready to run right now.'' Gustafson's wife, Heidi, was a member of the women's open division champions, the Coastline Cruisers. The dance was great. Too bad a lot of the runners couldn't move. ``The funniest thing is to watch people walk on Sunday and try to keep a straight face,'' said Gustafson, who like most of his teammates spends Saturday night at the beach to begin the recovery process. ``You see about 10,000 people, and anybody not limping or walking stiff-legged is either lying about running, only ran one or two legs, or is just superhuman and doesn't know it yet. ``A couple years ago, when I was in really good shape, I got up Sunday morning and decided to run the couple miles down to the bakery for the donuts. A guy pulls up to me in a car, leans out and yells, `You're a sick individual!' ``I was hurting, but I'd still rather run than drive.'' Starting to get the idea Gustafson loves the Hood to Coast? He has lots of company.