Hood to Coast is never something you forget. Ever. For MANY reasons. This year was exceptional  though. We had lots of "Memories" that we will never lose, no matter how hard we try!

First off, lets just start out with my van.  You will notice that is just me, as the sole representative of the female gender, in our van.  And that, is not a bad thing.  These guys were a crack up the entire time!!  We had so much fun.  Although is does have its down side, when you are all crammed into a tiny space with sweaty bodies.  Guys just really do sweat a lot more...

Our team, the "Severson re-runs"

I am sure that Pam and I are having a very interesting conversation based on our facial expressions.  If only I knew what it was...

Marking up the van for the race.  I was the designated artist.
We incorporated our Sponsors into the design.... Cozy Earth Bedding.

Us in the van, BEFORE any running happened.  Know how you can tell?

We are smiling...

Getting last minute instructions on meeting places for the two vans.

After the first run.  I was WIPED!!  It was 90 degrees and I ran on newly tarred BLACK asphalt for 5 miles under direct sunlight at 1pm.  I got heat blisters on the balls of BOTH feet.  The soles of my feet were bright red like I had burned them.  Bad news, as this was only my first of three legs.  Which meant I had to run on very bad blisters for the duration of the race.  Crazy because up until then I had never ever gotten a blister from running.  EVER.  Heat and black asphalt are a nasty combination.
But I got off relatively easy.  I still ran 8 minute miles and didn't pass out.  There were runners dropping like flies right and left of me as I ran.  Heat exhaustion every one of them.  I saw paramedics the whole way.  No one was prepared for the heat, no one had trained in that kind of heat.  This is Portland, Oregon after all.  It is always cool and damp.  No one was acclimated for the high temperature.

This is after I had rested a big from the hot run, I am actually smiling again.

Here are a few of the more notable events of the run:

First, a little foreshadowing....
We stopped at a Thai place in between legs and I ordered Pad Thai.  Yum. There was a minuscule amount of cabbage garnish on the top, of which I ate just a bit.  Unfortunately for me that little bit was more than enough, and it came into play in a BIG way later on in the race.  How? You shall see soon enough.

Our second leg was scheduled to begin around 8 or 9pm. That would put me running around Midnight, one-ish, because I was the fifth runner in our van. So we ate, showered, chatted up Troy and Holly and then took off for the next meeting place.  This second leg would turn out to be the most eventful of the entire race.
When we arrived and started running it soon became very apparent that the race coordinators hadn't really thought through how adding an extra 500 teams would play out in spacing and timing and SPACE, did I mention space?  There was none of it at ANY of the transition places.  We would drop our runner off and then wait in a huge traffic jam and watch as our runner ran by us and made it to the next spot before we were even half way there.  They would wait there, and wait there... listening to the caller yell out their number over and over again because there was no runner to take their place.  It was SO frustrating.  Everyone was angry and tired and cramped.  The wait was mostly on dirt roads so there were dust clouds that choked the air and made everyone in general even more miserable than the race on its own had already made us.  No one sleeping, everyone crammed into tiny vans, packed in like sardines, sweating all over one another.  I was right in the middle of Jason and Glen and kept falling asleep on them, apologizing and then slumping over on them again.  They at least had the side of the car to lean on, I just tried not take up too much of their personal space...

When my turn came to run my leg, it was right around 1am, or so.  It was my hardest leg, 7 miles almost all uphill.  It was pitch black and in the middle of the Coastal Mountain range.  A little spooky for anyone.  I started off well enough but about at mile 4 something strange started to happen.  I started to feel the need to swallow more than usual.  My throat felt tight and my tongue and lips started tingling.  I kept clearing my throat, but it felt like something was lodged in it.  Then, a horrible realization hit me!  I was having an anaphylactic reaction to the cabbage!!  I have this weird allergy that only happens in a perfect storm of events, a precise combination of metabolic change during exercise and eating something that reacts to that metabolic change in the form of an allergic reaction.  It is called Exercised Induced Anaphylaxis.  I was diagnosed with it in college, after, ironically, having my throat close shut during a run after eating cabbage salad earlier in the day.

I am not allergic to cabbage under any other circumstances.  ONLY when combined with exercise during the 24 hour period following consumption. And ONLY when the exercise is sufficient to cause that change.  In other words it has to be a VERY taxing exercise where my body heats up enough to cause the change.  This was definitely one of those times.  Here I was in the middle of no where, no one around, pitch black environment, and three miles until I reach help.  I had to BOOK it to get there before my breathing was impaired.  I took off running harder than I had up to that point.  Adrenaline definitely kicked in.  As I ran I could feel my lips swelling up huge, swallowing was impossible and breathing was interesting.  On the positive side, I really didn't notice how exhausted I was, there were other things on my mind.

When I finally reached the transition point I nearly scared my van mates out of their wits with my grotesquely huge lips.  Their eyes were as big as silver dollars.  As luck would have it I had thrown out my Benadryl that was in my pack earlier in the day because it was expired and I really had no thought as to why I would need it anyway.  We went over to the medic tent stationed there and they had none.  They called for the medics from down the way to come.  We waited, and waited... They got stuck in all the poorly planned traffic.  When they finally got there I asked them for Benadryl and they checked my vitals, declared that I wasn't dying yet so they couldn't give it to me.  There exact words were "Well, you are still breathing so we can't give it to you..."  What?!?! Seriously?  I have to not be breathing before they give it to me?  That is freaking ridiculous.  I said, "Well, we can wait until I stop breathing OR we can prevent that from happening...." HINT HINT.  But no can do.  They were hard liners.  Absolutely no saving unless you were practically dead already.  They had NO practice in prevention, oh no.

Finally I sent Glen out to solicit the other runners for Benadryl, while I was held hostage in the Ambulance with three paramedics watching me, waiting for me to stop breathing so they could then save me.  It turns out that he came across a van of nurses! Our lucky day.  They gave us enough Benadryl to knockout an elephant.  I knew that I was supposed to take 4.  The doctors from my previous anaphylactic experience had been very precise on my dosage so I would know what to do if it happened again.  And just so you know, this has happened exactly two other times IN MY LIFE.  Two other times.... Just my luck my third would be on the Hood to Coast.  Unfortunately, the ever unhelpful paramedics would only let me take one, NOT enough to help at all.  I finally consented so they would just let me out, and then took the other three as soon as I was out of their presence. Sheesh, who needs these guys anyway?  What a waste of space.

And so, from that point on I really have no memory.  I was apparently very funny doped up on Benadryl and provided great entertainment for the guys while we were all locked in the van together.  They were all sure that if I drank I would be the life of the party, because I sure acted like I was drunk.... apparently.  I have no memory of it.....also a very similar experience to being drunk I hear.  Oh well... Fortunately for me the hard gym floor that we got our nights sleep on didn't bother me all, thanks to the Benadryl, and I never did stop breathing, so good news in the end.  I had to receive some boon in all of this didn't i??

We finished the race, I even ran my last leg, blisters, benadryl and all.  I guess nothing can keep me down when i want something... and I wanted to finish the DARN race!  So I did.

And just because I know you were wondering, we did have team shirts.  Cozy Earth sponsored us and we had very good Cozy Earth running shirts, designed by yours truly.

Here is the front panel that went over the left breast pocket area:

Here is the back panel:



We truly ALL did wish we were sleeping, by the end.  Well, all except me of course, since I already was!!


Here we are at the finish line,
In our Cozy Earth Shirts and snazzy new medals.
Go team!!

Until next time...

I tried to fit as many cool things "unique" to Utah in our trip to give the boys the full experience. It was SO fun to "tour" Utah and see some of the sights. We visited Hill Airforce Base and the Kennecott copper mine. They were SO cool, and of course perfect places to go with a bunch of boys.

I couldn't believe how many amazing planes they have on display at the Museum.  The boys were ecstatic.  My Step-dad, Kurt, was in the Air Force in Vietnam and so he had some special insight into most of the planes we got to see.  It was fun to have a personal tour by someone in the know!

   

Levi loved the fact that the tires on a lot of the planes were "Goodyear".  

 

A personal favorite of Levi and Calder:

A lot of planes had a "Kill" count.  The bombs painted on the side of this plane is the kill count for this particular plane.  The kill count is how many enemy aircraft were destroyed by each plane.

This was a WWII plane, I love the cartoon Hilter in a coffin.  Funny!

One of the retired Air Force one planes:

Looks like KK can't be a fighter pilot yet... He can't wear the "ejection" seatbelt!

Boys in love with a "Top Gun" fighter jet

The cool thing about the museum was the simulation port and the hands on part where kids could climb in old planes and play with the gears.  Here is KK all dressed up and ready to fly!

KK in the Cockpit.  (we couldn't get him out of it without a minor war of our own)

Calder and Ansel WAITING and WAITING for their turn....

Finally they get to make their own rockets and launch them.

 

Too much happiness for little boys!

The  Kennecott Copper Mine 

The entire time I lived in Utah, growing up, I never got a chance to see the copper mine.  It is one of the few landmarks visible from space and the largest open pit mine on earth.  It was VERY amazing.  I couldn't believe the extent of it, even when I stood there looking at it.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see rows of drilled holes on the ledge of the flat part of the bottom of the pit.  These are blast holes.  They blew them up while we were watching it was startling.

These trucks were amazing!!  The picture doesn't do them justice, but they are enormous!!!!! They only go a couple  miles an hour and it takes them 45 minutes each way to go down and back up again.  I found it very funny that their ideal candidate for the drivers of these behemoth machines were middle aged women! That cracked me up.  I guess they are responsible enough not to mess them up and patient enough not to go crazy sitting in these things going nowhere all day long.  I know I couldn't handle it.....

Each tire is $500,000.  They were enormous... Look at the size compared to the boys:

 

A close up:

Ah, here is a good perspective photo of the size:

Look at how minuscule that school bus is compared to it! Don't ask me why a school bus was going down into the pit... but it was.  I heard that the employees kids attend school on site, but I still can see why the school would be at the bottom of the pit...

At the end we went into the gift shop and the boys each got to buy their own copper souvenir.  After watching the entire process and viewing the pit, the kids had a new appreciation of all things copper/gold and silver.  What a process!

I spent a lot of time going through my plans for this Utah trip. Joe was with the scouts on a 50 miler back in Oregon and I had the boys to myself. I really wanted to make the most of the vacation. After seeing the Church sights, we took a day off from sight seeing and golfed and swam. I STINK at golf. I think it is partly because I was taught right handed years ago (being a left hander) and then was recently given left handed clubs. It was like learning to golf all over again. I kept trying to line up in the right handed way, but then my clubs would be backwards. Then when I would finally get situated the right way, my hands would still be positioned for the other stance. This made for some pretty gnarly shots and stomping of feet.    

Yikes!!

The boys, however, did great.  We were REALLY slow though and had to let several parties pass over us.  And this was only 9 holes of golf.  Good thing too!

A little side trip we made was to the Utah Car auction.  It is the big one for the entire western US.  The interesting part of the whole experience was how they decorated the lobby.  Apparently the founder of the auction was also a big game hunter.  The entire lobby was like a grotesque ode to his career as a hunter and to taxidermy in general.  It was very macabre and the boys were very intrigued.  He shot a lot of exotic animals.  It was like being in some over the top hunting lodge.

A lot of them were posed, like this crocodile eating the small antelope.

Ansel, intrigued and a little grossed out:

Um, yeah...

Calder kept asking, "Seriously? He killed all these animals?? Why?"

Ah yes, cars and carcasses, what could go better together?...

Calder wanted to pose with the Hyena, he really wanted it to look like he was in the wild being attacked by a Hyena, but there is only so much one can do in a garage/hunting lodge environment....

Yes, it is freaky.

At the end of the day we went to Farmington's awesome community pool, I wish they had places like this where we live, but alas Oregon is probably not the best place for an outdoor pool.

Kaelan was tired and cranky and I can't remember why he was throwing a fit right here, but I do remember how fast, in nano seconds, he went from this:

To this...

When I mentioned that if it didn't stop right now I was taking him home.

Amazing how quickly kids can turn on and off their waterworks...

Fun day!