Hood to Coast newbie questions

HTC is a really fun experience, and worth doing once (it's really expensive, so maybe only once). Our team coordinated everything from various parts of the country (Midwest/East Coast), and fairly easily. The only things you really need to figure out are hotels before/after, and vans. You'll need to book all of those laughably early (like tomorrow), and a lot of the hotels at the finish have a minimum night stay required. We chose for our first night to be when we were still running, so that we could be sure that the room was ours whenever we arrived, and wouldn't have to wait on check-in or anything like that. Hotels will be expensive because they can be. Our Motel 8 was like $200/night, so be prepared for that. We stayed at a lodge just down the street from the start that was really convenient (Timberline Lodge, maybe?), but there's another down the street with a bunk bed situation that other teammates used and liked, too.

We waited too long for vans, and ended up having to pick one up in Seattle (?) and have a runner fly into that airport and drive it to the race site (not ideal), so definitely jump on the van thing... the rental companies and hotels out there all know it's coming, but there is still limited supply.

We had two vans and no support drivers -- I think there's a "no local runners support waiver." Can't remember. Basically, if no one live nearby, you can waive of of the required support drivers, I think. Our runners all switched off on driving responsibilities without issue.

I've never done HTC so I can't speak to their rules specifically, but have done several Ragnar Relay races which is the same general idea/setup.

We've never had an extra driver in our vans. It has always been just the 6 runners. Even though I've never done it the other way I would prefer that the runners drive.

There were no cons, and you have the added benefit of not needing to jam one more person & their stuff into the van if you don't need to.

-Yes you can drive and run too. That's the way we've always done it. It's not stupid.

Traffic in Portland and at the Mist have become major problems. It's just about physically impossible for a competitive team to make it through without significant delays. It's can be pretty maddening.

If you're planning to captain the team, be prepared for a big challenge in getting people to actually show up. You may think you have a lot of interest now, but people drop like flies.

From prior experience in Ragnar relays, I would count on losing between a quarter and a third of your team dropping out between now and race day, with 1-2 of them being within the last month.

Make sure it's a talking point early that everyone on your team should always be looking for replacements since you will likely need a few on very short notice.

There are a number of relays nationwide that are less crazy. Just don't do Ragnar-they suck. 100 teams instead of a thousand. The exchange points at HTC are out of control.

It's preferable for the runners to drive the vans. Makes for less crowded vans. I've run relays for a decade-that's the way to do it. It also allows for the use of minivans, which are a lot easier to drive/park in the crazy exchange points.

Did it twice in the mid 90's. It was a lot of fun and I'd say definitely do it. As for the fellow who said to expect team members to drop out and even at the last minute... DITTO!!! Expect this. People commit and drop out like crazy. Your hardest challenge will be getting 12 people at the starting line. Other than that it's quite the experience.

Traffic wasn't that bad, but we always went through P-Town during the night. Not sure what it would be like during the day.

I ran on one competitive team and one couch potato team. I had more fun on the couch potato team. Less stress and you just enjoy the experience for what it's worth.

We used Suburban's as our vehicles. Worked very well. We also had a driver which was nice so you could just relax when you weren't running rather than taking a driving shift.

Expect to be roasted on your third leg. But that's what's fun, you have to run when you are dead from lack of sleep and fatigue. You'll be amazed at the times you can run in that situation - at least I was.

Relay that pipe wrote:

There are a number of relays nationwide that are less crazy. Just don't do Ragnar-they suck. 100 teams instead of a thousand. The exchange points at HTC are out of control.

Out of control exchange points are great, like when there is so much traffic you can't even get your runner there.

If you are in OR, Wild Rogue Relay is awesome (and very hard) and Cascade Lakes Relay is also really good. Both will be much less of a logistics nightnmare than HTC.

I'm not sure what a previous poster meant by a requirement of having a driver. Many teams don't have a specified driver and if you only can book a mini-van, you will have more room if you share the driving among the runners.

If you have even ONE local, however, you will be required to provide THREE volunteers, which a major pain in the butt. The race appears to hold back the "good" assignments for their favored teams and more than likely, unless you register your volunteers within minutes of the signup for volunteers, they will get sucky assignments (like middle of nowhere in the middle of the night).

I think HTC is telling people that only 1 in 4 teams makes it in from the lottery. If you have a fairly good sized group that wants to do it, go ahead and enter the lottery. I'd suggest having people put up their share of the entry fee now, with the understanding that if they bail, that their replacement will reimburse them.

I've done it for 19 of the last 20 years and this year was the worst yet, more so than several years ago when they somehow managed to have 80% of the teams converge on the same one lane stretch at one time.

In the 90s, there were lots of fast and competitive teams and it was pretty exciting, but now most of the teams are so much slower (30-36 HOURS) and non-competitive. Because they are moving through the course so slowly, they clog up the exchanges creating insane traffic delays. HTC starts them as early as 3 am (!!!!) on Friday and for the last several years, there were only a handful of teams starting in waves at 3-4 pm, and then a complete break until the "fast" teams started at 5:30. They used to have the fast teams start at 7 pm, and all the previous waves would have 20-30 teams - which meant that you got to see the super-speedy teams in action. No more.

We have an "automatic" entry (top 6 in each division get to by-pass the lottery), but honestly, it's not nearly as much fun as it used to be. And the management cannot figure out how to allow teams to run without the massive traffic problems. They are solely motivated by the tons of money they make - and it doesn't seem like they care about the runners.

If you do get in - find housing in Seaside and find vans as soon as you can. Bringing vans in from out of state is a solid plan and borrowing them is great too.

I have captained several teams. Loved each time, but mainly because of the advice below. Being organized is a major thing that first time captains have trouble with.

Yes runners can be drivers and yes it works just fine. Not stupid at all. The upside in this scenario is that you have 1 fewer people in the vehicle. If you do this make sure that someone riding shotgun is giving directions and watching for turns and such.

My "rule" was that no one should drive more than he/she wants to.

While the temptation may to find the fastest possible group, I would encourage you to consider the fun aspect. Unless you are going for a win in your division, having a team of people who do not get along will make it a miserable experience for everyone. (Yes I have seen this happen on teams).

V1per41 wrote:

From prior experience in Ragnar relays, I would count on losing between a quarter and a third of your team dropping out between now and race day, with 1-2 of them being within the last month.

Make sure it's a talking point early that everyone on your team should always be looking for replacements since you will likely need a few on very short notice.

A very good point. Have a group of backups although I lost at the most 2 people.

Here is a way to help reduce the chances:

Create a budget for the team (Vans, hotel, gas, food for the van, reg fee, team shirts). Figure out a cost per person and get that money upfront. If they bail, they get their money back once a replacement is found and pays.

Also, put some cushion in the budget. Way easier for you to write checks to 11 people than get $20 from each of 11 people after the race. (Or just use the money for a post-team beer party).

A problem with renting in Seaside is that many places require a 7 day minimum, you might want to look farther north or south.

The last year we flew into PDX, stayed at an airport hotel on Thursday night. We kept one room overnight for Friday night to store luggage (more space in the van or SUV) and also a place for van 2 to hang out before heading to the exchange zone.

After the race on Sat, we had some food and beer on the beach and drove back to the hotel. Far cheaper, but you lose a little of the flavor of the event. most of us had done HTC so the beach party thing was not that important. It also made it easy for some folks to fly out early on Sunday morning.

Go ahead and rent vans now. You can easily cancel. SUVs would great as well as long as they are big like Escalades. Do not wait until teams get notified that they are in.

personally, these relays are selfish. They ruin the reputation and respect for runners. This event has got too big and it is a for-profit business first and foremost. Will they lower the number of teams? No.

The event pisses on the goodwill of residents and makes runners look bad. Residents on the route HATE HTC. It is out of control.

There's only so many weekends in the summer to spend at the coast. you literally have to skip that weekend because of the traffic. HTC weekend traffic on 26 coming back clogs up everything for hours. Lots of ugly painted vans with sleepy drivers swerving around too.

This is a race that has seen its time. It is a luck of the draw thing now with the traffic issues at exchanges. Fun? Maybe. A serious race? Certainly not. Worth doing once? Meh.

I did H2C for the first time this year with a bunch of my college teammates (mostly from the east coast). It was probably the most fun running event I've done in in the 10-odd years since college -- highly recommend it. We used minivans and did have one support driver, but it was not a problem to trade off running and driving in the other van. Also, we had three injuries and/or cancellations in the weeks leading up to the event, so we ran shorthanded -- meant we all had to run 4 legs and had to switch vans to stay in order (usually the same 6 people stay in a van). This made it extra challenging logistically, but obviously not insurmountable. Running 4 legs was really tough though, particularly because we were trying to run fast, and we were all pretty fried by the end. Traffic was indeed awful, but we managed to take some absolutely crazy detours and stay on track. Overall, I thought this added some drama and uncertainty to the event that made it even more exciting. The winning team (Nike) apparently did get caught up in the traffic and miss some exchanges, but they just complained to the organizers after the race and got like 2 hrs knocked off of their time, so that's always an option too.

Thanks everyone for the candid and useful info - we certainly should have done more research earlier. After sharing this thread and discussing we had mixed responses from the team - so we entered the lottery figuring there was a relatively low chance we'd get selected anyway. If we get picked then we'll go and have fun - if not then we'll try to find another similar event. Lottery selections are 11/3/14 - if we don't get picked and ultimately decide we did really want to race we do get priority for the following year's lottery and would have more time to properly prepare

Thanks again, I appreciate the feedback as always.

I think you should try Ragnar Relay Races. Fun and more friends to gather!

And I have here for the August race schedules and some tips on wise spending.

https://247viz.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/budget-wise-ragnar-relay-races/