Paper: Houston Chronicle (TX) Title: Texans on the run in 197-mile relay Houston team up to challenge of Oregon race Date: September 4, 2005 TIMBERLINE LODGE, ORE. - Tell someone you're taking vacation to run in a 197-mile relay race and you'll get an odd look. So, what was I thinking when I agreed to be part of the 12-man Houston team at the annual Hood to Coast Relay, the country's largest, which starts on the slopes of Mount Hood, east of Portland, and ends at Seaside, on the Pacific Coast? But here I am, waiting for my team's 5:15 p.m. heat. Runners have been leaving in 15-minute waves since 8 a.m., but it's our first time on the road. The crowd skews young and fit. Our team ranges from early 30s to late 40s, five women and seven men with varying athletic abilities. The parking lot looks like a staging area for the Art Car Parade, minus the elegance. Vans are embellished with miniature outhouses, inflatable dolls and off-color slogans scrawled in washable paint. No surprise; these are runners, people accustomed to dealing with unavoidable bodily functions at the most unlikely times and in the most public places. Team names, ones fit for publication anyway, include Painful Case of the Runs, Whiz Kids and Al's Exploding Honey Buckets. Our team is "Houston, We Have a Problem," and the first problem seems to be confusion about the theme. We're to wear Texas flag running shorts, but Matt Kolesar, an ExxonMobil environmental manager with a wry sense of humor, and Anna Sumrall Helm, a lively seventh-grade teacher at Landrum Middle School, have morphed into Superman and Batgirl. The gun goes off, and Superman bounds down the road. The rest of us jog to the vans. Our alpha males, team captain Wayne Cohen and Bryan Harris, are the designated drivers. I'm in Wayne's van, along with Batgirl, Superman, Molly Swinney and Dora Tognarelli. Dirk Voorhees, Fernando Marcenaro, Brett Riley, and Shawn and Shay Emerick climb into Van 2 with Bryan. We've stocked our vehicles with $223 in carbohydrates and water; four jars of peanut butter are our only protein. Matt has burned a custom CD, and we crank up the White Stripes' Blue Orchid as we overtake him. We whoop and cheer, then speed up so we can pull over farther along to give him water because none is provided. Honey Buckets - portable toilets - are plentiful, though. We drive to the first transition area to wait. Superman swoops in and hands the strip of purple flexible metal that coils around our wrists - and acts as our baton - to Anna. Because she'll be running after 6 p.m., Anna wears a reflective vest and carries a flashlight. It's still 80 degrees, the bright sun is shining directly into her eyes and the vest is seriously compromising her leather-cape-and-hood look, so Batgirl is not amused. Doesn't slow her down, though. The team is fast; I'm intimidated, even though five of us are rookies. Matt reassures me that we're out here to have fun. Wayne, however, has mentioned several times how he'd like to break 24 hours. "As long as everyone pulls his weight, we should be OK," he says. No pressure there. Anna passes off to Molly, and I'm the runner on deck. Dora hugs me and waits in the transition area, holding a stopwatch and the clipboard where we record our times, while I rock back and forth and take deep breaths. Each person runs three legs - three to eight miles each - and it's important not to go out too fast, even when the leg is downhill. I'm off. "Go, Texas!" Our flag shorts define us. Nine teams are from Texas, and we all go by that name while on the road. I score my first "road kill," i.e. pass another runner. We keep the tally on our van window. I become road kill myself twice, but by the time I slap the purple bracelet across Wayne's extended forearm, I'm in the black with five. It's my turn to rest. I throw a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich together. We all rotate between roles: runner, driver, navigator and gofer. Dora, our sixth leg, finishes her run along a busy highway (none of the roads are closed for the race) and we hand the clipboard to Van 2, which has been waiting for us. The plan is for Van 1 to sleep while Van 2 runs. We park in crowded lot in an industrial part of Portland just before midnight. Minutes later, a van parks next to us and its occupants start yammering. "Hey look! These guys are from Houston." "Look, they wrote `Houston, We Have a Problem. There are no hills there!' " Laughter. We'd tell them to shut up, but we're too tired. They finally do, and we drift off. A train goes by. A cell phone rings. It's 12:45 a.m. The good news is that Van 2 - the self-anointed Studs - have walked the walk. "No sleep for Van 1!" becomes their motto. Ha. Ha. Ha. Dazed, Matt, our first runner, rushes away. He's ditched the Superman outfit, but his Kryptonite is a fried-chicken sandwich. We desperately navigate through downtown Portland, where partyers are spilling into the street from clubs. They look so normal. I hate them. We're deep into Hood to Coast limbo, an increasingly surreal place. Time is defined only by the estimated finish of the next runner, distance is marked by the length of the leg. I run my second leg at 3:30 a.m., and the effort feels much faster than it really is. I have no idea where I am. Our roles have been redefined: fatigued runner, exhausted driver, dozing navigator, irritable water provider. At least one of us is always slumped motionless in a seat. It's quite cold by the end of our second rotation, when we realize we've lost Dora in the dark. "Are you OK?" I ask after we send someone back out to the road to find her and bring her to the van. She stares at me. "No. It's cold, I'm in a singlet, and my team abandoned me." I shove two sleeping bags on top of her and deal with my guilt. We head for a wide field at dawn. We manage a solid two hours' sleep. "Rested," we rally ourselves for our last legs. The bananas are gone, we're sick of Gatorade, and it's hot again. Matt is the first to finish. I ask him how it feels. "The same," he deadpans. "Tired and sore." But I'm nearly hysterical with relief. Now it's up to the other van, and the Studs cook. When we're finally reunited on the beach, the team has finished in 23:49, good enough for 75th place out of 1,063 teams. We've bested the other Texas teams and beat our goal by 11 minutes. We rock! The next morning, Wayne cheerfully tells us he's reserved rooms for next year. I give him an odd look.