Return to CSU Stories
by Jon Waldron
It all started with Pat Moreton, of course, as so many memorable running experiences in the last few years have started with him. Pat moved to California two years ago, and got hooked up with a bunch of Bay-area runners who needed a couple of fast men to fill out their twelve-person team for the 1994 Hood-to-Coast Relay, a race that starts halfway to the summit of 11,000-foot Mount Hood, 50 miles east of Portland, Oregon, and finishes almost 200 miles to the west at the Pacific Ocean. Pat signed on, and sent out an electronic call for another CSU runner to join him. Eventually, John LaChance took up the challenge and the two of them ran last year's race as ringers for their adopted team. Sue LaChance joined the team to help with the unbelievably complex logistics. Almost as soon as John and Sue returned to Lunenburg and Pat returned to San Francisco, the stories of their heroic exploits began to inflame the desires of their CSU comrades back East. Soon, John and Sue were taking names, and signing up bodies to enlist on a CSU mixed team for the 1995 race.
What was it about this race that exercised such a pull on our individual and collective imaginations? Certainly the race itself was compelling--a stage relay race covering 196 miles across one-third the state of Oregon. Twelve runners would have to run three legs each, thirty-five separate hand-offs, starting at dusk and ending the following day. And why do we actually seek out such challenges as running three 5+ mile races within 13 hours, two of them in darkness? Why, because there's something indescribably romantic and wonderful about falling asleep out of exhaustion in the middle of a field, waking up cold in the night, shaking off sleep long enough to use the disgusting portable toilets, and climbing stiffly into a packed and slovenly van with your teammates, ready once again to join the glorious battle for bragging rights over another pitiful team stuffed into another van down the road. (Those portable toilets! I could write a book about those things. Race rules were VERY strict about where it was permissible to discharge spent fuel, and because we were all Trying to do the Right Thing, we all spent much more time than we care to remember waiting to use those over-burdened closets from Hell. The lines were always long, and the stench was always a physical obstacle to be overcome. Deciding when to yield to necessity and get in line became a major issue and a source of great anxiety, if not physical pain.) Ok, so maybe it wasn't so romantic.
Of course, I knew none of this when I signed up. For me, the major attraction of the trip was the excuse it gave me for visiting Portland, my favorite place in the world, where I went to school fifteen years ago. True, I would have little time to visit the places I knew when I lived there, but in fact I would have a chance to finish my first leg almost at the gates of my Alma Mater,Reed College, in Southeast Portland at 1:30 a.m. It sounded too good to be true. Why other people decided to take the trip, I don't know, but each of us, pursuing our own dreams, booked our flights to the Rose City. Here is the roll-call of the brave and the insane who signed up:
Gregg DelVecchio, Sarah DelVecchio, Holly Fryberger, Annie Komanecky, John LaChance, Sue LaChance, Kim LeSage, Terry McNatt, Sue McNatt, Pat Moreton, Keith Pijanowski, and Jon Waldron. (Tim O'Brien also made the trip out to Oregon and competed with a different team. I'm going to let him write his own story, which, I might mention, included a 200-mile solo bike ride following the race.)
After much debate, the team chose to compete under the name "Flying Buttresses," a tribute to the club's deep and abiding interest in Gothic Architecture...NOT! Actually, teams in this event take choosing a name very seriously. The elite teams choose names that show their corporate personalities. (Team Nike uses the funky "Mambu Baddu," which is Swahili for "No run, no shoe contract." Adidas' uses the more conventional "Rolling Thunder"). The hoi polloi generally go for names that honor the most memorable aspects of the race: pain, lack of sleep, and confusion (A very few examples will have to suffice: "Killer Zzz's," "I-Be-Pro-Fun," "Where the Hell is Van 3?" and so on). Team names are a source of pride and exhibitionism. Choosing a name for the CSU contingent was a challenge. Names that were proposed but ultimately rejected included: Boston Natural Gas, Vaseline Alley, and the ever-popular-but-the-logo-might-be-a-problem, Surgin' Genitals.
I can't mention the Flying Buttresses without praising Pat Robinson for her splendid t-shirt design, which was the source of much enthusiastic discussion regarding the symbolism of its graphic elements.
The logistics for this race are difficult even for teams with local support. To field a twelve-person team from Boston was nothing less than a heroic effort. I have no idea how many hours of work Pat, John, Sue, and others put into the planning of our campaign, but it was masterful and complete. Once I was out there, I saw the details come together with military precision. Our plans were greatly aided and abetted by Annie Komanecky, who arranged to have parents living in the area (in Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland). The team basically occupied Annie's parents house for two days, eating prodigious amounts of food virtually non-stop during that time. Meanwhile, Annie arrived early, baked and bought liberally, and drove everywhere with everyone, including driving to the airport a few dozen times, while entertaining her white-knuckled passengers with devastating comments directed to the less-gifted drivers crowding the highways.
Annie's parents were great, and were totally into the race, helping us prepare in countless small and not-so-small ways. Annie's father helped us rent the vans at a steep discount, provided needed local knowledge, carried a bunch of our gear to the coast in his truck, and wore his Flying Buttress t-shirt with pride and the proper attitude. Annie's mother dealt incredibly well with having perpetually hungry houseguests who also had a tendency to drop off to sleep in every corner of the house when they were not using up the hot water or covering the living room floor with clothes, sleeping bags, and groceries.
On Friday morning, we had our final council of war. As we discussed strategies, tactics, and rules, Sue and Kim provided each of us with a hand-drawn CSU tatoo to adorn our upper arms and make us ready for the test that was before us. Up until that point, the actual running of the race had seemed an abstraction to me, but from the moment Sue marked me with the cobalt blue yin-yang circle of life, I felt that my body was marked for battle.
About 4:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon, August 25th, the Van One people packed themselves into Van One and the Van Two people packed themselves into Van Two, and both vans left the Komanecky's and headed out to the Mountain. Traffic was heavy, and it took us a good 45 minutes before we intersected the race route about 35 miles West of the start. It was very strange to drive by runners whose teams had started hours before, who were by now 30 miles ahead of us, when we still had two hours to go before our start. Stranger still to realize that we would catch many of them before the next afternoon.
The race started in waves of about 20 teams every 15 minutes. The first waves had started early Friday afternoon. Our predicted time for the race had qualified us to start with the elite wave at 7:30 p.m. This was a gas, because the elite wave included the Nike and Adidas teams, as well as other fast mixed and masters teams. Before getting us underway, the race master of ceremonies was really getting into hyping the Nike-Adidas Tong War. And no wonder, for both teams were stacked with national and international class runners. Lining up for Nike was the diminutive and explosive Eddie Hellebuyck, who seemed aerodynamically designed to make the most of the first leg, a 5.4-mile free fall with a vertical drop of 2000 feet. Undaunted by the course or the competition, our man Keith Pijanowski lined up alongside the legends showing nothing but disdain for their anorectic statures and inversely heavy competitive resumes.
The elite runners, the crowd, the megaphone voice intoning the honors of the runners on the line, it was all wonderful and exciting. And as the true master of the goings-on, there stood behind us in the late afternoon sun the high peak of the mountain itself. And then a moment later the starter sent the runners on their way. Hellebuyck popped from the start like a champagne cork, while Keith decided to survey the race from rear and rather deliberately loped downhill.
(Hellebuyck would never slow down, and no one would challenge him for supremacy. He finished the leg in about 22 minutes to average just over 4:00 per mile, about two minutes ahead of his nearest rival. His run broke open the race at the very beginning, and Nike never looked back, going on to defeat Adidas by almost an hour.)
While waiting to see Keith at the first exchange zone, we realized that in all the excitement on the mountain, no one had remembered to start a watch. We compensated by starting a watch exactly one hour after the start, but since we had to record all our times, it was an annoyance for next 19 hours.
For those of us in Van Two, that was about the last we saw of our Van One teammates actually doing any running. The logistics of racing and sleeping meant that we had to keep leap-frogging them. Here's how it worked: first, each van kept track of its own six runners, dropping off the runner to go next, picking up the runner who had just finished, and getting people warmed up and cooled down in an efficient way. This was tricky at the beginning, but became routine after a while. Second, while the crew of one Van was running, the crew of the other tried to drive ahead to the next Van exchange (six legs later) so that its inhabitants could catch a few hours of sleep. So after watching Keith hand off to Holly, Van Two drove off to the start of Leg 7 to catch a few hours sleep in a big field next to a Safeway supermarket. It was a beautiful night, and I think most of us did manage to sleep a little bit. To keep us in touch with Van One, John curled up in his sleeping bag with the cellular phone.
Falling asleep was a challenge. To begin with, we were too excited to sleep. Furthermore, it was only 9 p.m. on Friday night. And finally, there were the sounds of the race, audible all around us, and especially the loud voices of the "spotters" whose job it was to call out the numbers of approaching runners so that those waiting for the hand-off would be alert enough to receive it. And it was dark, so the spotters really were performing a valuable service. However, we grew to hate them and their endless intoning of three-digit numbers loudly into the night. "2...8...3!!" (and this would be relayed by repetition down the line all the way to the exchange zone)"2...8...3!" "2...8...3!" And then another, "5...3...7!!""5...3...7!" "5...3...7!" And so on, and so on. At 9 p.m. it was barely tolerable. Later, at 3 a.m. in the middle of the wilderness, when sleep wouldn't come, we came to feel (perhaps unfairly) that these spotters had been assigned to us as personal torturers.
But we finally did fall asleep, and then a short hour later, John was making the rounds rousing us from sleeping bags. I felt sorry for Sue LaChance who not only had to wake up, but had to warm up as well and get ready to race. On the other hand, it was terribly exciting after so much time in anticipation to finally have a chance to run.
Terry was the sixth runner from Van One, so he handed off to Sue. Our rotation was Sue, Sarah, John, Gregg, myself, and Annie. That meant that when Sue received the baton, I still had about two hours before the start of my leg. Because the rules of the race require that every runner carry a flashlight while running, it was a beautiful sight to drive down the back roads of Sue's course watching the tiny lights bobbing up and down like lanterns on ships at sea. Because of the vastly staggered start times for all the teams, the congestion was manageable and relatively constant. We had few problems with the exchange zones and before too long I was warming up for my first leg, a 6.4 mile stage that entered Portland and wound through the suburban neighborhoods of my College days. It was a little before 1 a.m. Saturday morning.
My run went pretty well. I passed about a dozen people, and ran down a fairly fast guy from one of Nike's farm teams in the last half mile. Perhaps I overdid it, as my next two races were pretty lame. I handed off to Annie, at about 1:30 a.m. and began cooling down. The night was fragrant and calm. I felt in a very contented mood.
(While I was lost in my reverie, Annie had the unenviable task of running through a busy night-time neighborhood at just about the time when the bars were closing and their patrons were emerging out into the streets.)
Meanwhile, Pat Moreton had found a dreary and depressing vacant lot near the van exchange zone where the team could get an hour of sleep. It had been slow navigating through Portland, and it wouldn't be as much sleep as they wanted. They were all tired now, because they already had one race under their belts.
At about the time I was finishing, Pat was taking a call on the cellular phone from John. Annie was about to start running, John told Pat, and Pat was figuring how much more time there was for sleep. The spreadsheet said that Annie was due to arrive at about 2:45 a.m.,so there was still plenty of time. Pat lay down in his sleeping bag and kept being bothered because something wasn't quite right. A few minutes later he realized that the spreadsheet must be wrong and a quick call back to John confirmed the mistake, that, in fact, an extra 30 minutes had been errantly added to Annie's arrival time, which was a 30 minutes his team did not have. He quickly roused Keith, and told him to get ready to run, because he only had about 10 minutes to warm up. And when Annie arrived, Keith had barely slapped his contacts in his eyes, but as long as he could see, he was ready to run.
God knows, Pat's reputation is already safe for posterity, but leaving out his exploits in this race would be to impverish my account of it.
One of the things I love about Pat is that he approaches the task of preparing to race the way MacArthur approached the task of re-taking the Philippines. MacArthur said, "I shall return!" Pat Moreton says, "I shall get fit!" it's not a question of if, it's a question of when, and when he does get in shape, well, keep the children off the streets, 'cuz folks' gon' git hurt.
After Pat arrived in Portland, it was obvious he was very fit. It wasn't just that his body was weathered and toughened by adaptation to consecutive 100-mile weeks in the hills of San Francisco and a summer of construction work, it was also the kick-ass attitude that he wore like a leather jacket. He kept jawing with co-captain LaChance about how he wanted tougher stages to run. It was kind of frightening, really, to see the expression in his eyes as he demanded more miles and longer hills. Finally John had to throw him some chunks of raw meat to keep him quiet so the rest of us could sleep. In fact, Pat's three stages were gnarlacious in the extreme. Leg 1 featured a steady climb of several miles, and Leg 3 crossed a mountain range that appears as a major topographical feature on many world maps. On the first exchange, Pat barreled into the exchange zone so hard and fast that Terry McNatt had a near-death experience trying to take the baton. On his third leg, Pat made up 9 minutes on the mixed team that was our main competition at that point. I heard a rumor that grown men and women were fainting with alarm when Pat pulled into the zone, steam spouting from his nostrils and a smell of charred EVA rising from his smoldering insoles.
After the race, I heard a story that Pat was walking along the beach in Seaside when he passed a group of women from the aforementioned mixed team. One of the women staggered and clutched the arm of her companion, gasping "It's him!"
I wasn't there. I didn't see them run, but I did pore over the spreadsheet and could follow the progress my other Van One comrades as they traversed the countryside at breakneck speed.
First, there was Keith. The brave (or was it naive?) fellow actually volunteered to run Leg1...despite the horror stories from the previous year. I think his motivation must have been to finish first, so he could drink beer first.
There was Holly, who had spent Wednesday and Thursday wind-surfing out at Hood River, and ran the very challenging second leg (1500 foot vertical drop).
Then Sue McNatt who throughout the trip seemed to be everywhere keeping everything under control and on schedule.
Then Kim, who is, in my humble opinion, one of the great relay runners of our age. More than anyone else, she consistently was one-two minutes faster than her predicted time.
And Terry, who is, as we all know, most cheerful when he is participating in some event that leaves a long trail of human wreckage and destruction among the un-gnarly. Pat may be a relentless competitor, but Terry has this habit of running totally outrageous races looking no more perturbed than is he were heading over to the EZ-boy to pop the lid off a homebrew. Terry ran the darkest leg of the race, the 18th, in the middle of the wilderness with no lights and no moon. Many other teams faltered here, their runners going off down dirt roads where they succumbed to hypothermia (it was about 32.1 degrees F) or were eaten by wild animals, but Terry just kind of shrugged and navigated by the belt of Orion or something, coming in right on schedule, stripping to the waist, and asking for a beer.
While we're on the subject of my personal heroes...I don't know if you've ever noticed, but when Sue LaChance gets really into a race, her feet don't actually strike the ground when she runs;instead, the force of her stride causes a local compression of the air beneath those size 6 Nikes and she planes off this atmospheric discontinuity with much the same effect of a bar of soap slipping out of your hands in the shower. Sue had the unenviable role of being the first runner from Van Two to run. This meant that she had to wake up twice in the cold and the dark, warm up while the rest of us were mostly unconscious, and crank. Every time I saw her got hrough this process and get the team jump-started with another monster run, I was more impressed.
And Sarah DelVecchio was another one. She just seemed to get stronger every time she ran, so while the Sarah's main competition--an air-brushed woman from Nike's mixed team--looked formidable onFriday night, Sarah positively humbled her Saturday afternoon.
Then there was John, running third, who put together three very strong runs, including a bitchin' last leg of 7 miles which he ran as though his legs were fresh. John had the longest cumulative running of anyone on the team: 18.4 miles of hills and rough roads. This included 5.4 miles at dawn along a dusty road that went from nowhere to nowhere. The van traffic raised so much dust that many runners wore bandannas across their mouths, or even masks to keep the stuff out of their lungs. Waiting in the early morning haze of wet dust for John to finish was like waiting for the Hound of the Baskervilles to come lurching out of the fog on the great Grimpen Moor.
And Gregg DelVecchio was another one who just kept getting stronger, though he had as little sleep or rest as the rest of us. Gregg's last leg was about 4 miles and he blasted it, coming in a couple of minutes before we expected him (I was barely ready to take the hand-off). He was also an ideal van-mate, prepared for anything, untroubled by the race chaos all around him, and a man of decisive action with his hand on the wheel of the van. (The DelVechhios, wife and husband, took a day off after the race and then relaxed some more by climbing Mount Rainier.)
Annie was our anchor runner, which is always the toughest leg to run, especially in a race that spans almost 20 hours! Annie overcame stomach trouble after the first stage, and great fatigue on the last to run three solid legs that were right on expected pace. And she didn't slow down at the end either. The rest of us were waiting there on the beach and we were terribly excited as Annie came into view. I know I was kind of expecting her to coast in, but no...she charged across the sand with conviction, because the race wasn't over dammit, and it was all anyone of us could do to trail her weakly across the line.
After the race was over and after we had had our picture taken on the beach, we commenced a stiff walk to the hotel, about 8 blocks away, or maybe it was two blocks away and it felt like 8 blocks. The first order of business was to retrieve Van #2, which we had parked some further blocks away. John and I set out to find the van, leaving the rest of the crew to begin grazing. One of the most interesting things about near-total exhaustion is how the brain fails to recognize or acknowledge the fact that it's no longer capable of dealing successfully with the world. You would think the brain would have some kind of warning system, like a great big DANGER light that warns the operator of impending mental impairment. But no, the brain actually acts like Al Haig, saying, "I'm in charge here," when nothing could be farther from the truth. As its actual grip on the current reality loosens, the brain starts a little monologue:
"Ok, folks blood sugar's a little low, extremities a little cold, seems a little fuzzy for four o'clock in the afternoon, but I'm still in control, nothing serious here. Hmmm, feet seem to be walking. Walk, walk, walk. I wonder where they're going? Make a note: ask feet where they're going; now someone's talking to me, let's see, check them out, is this someone I know? Familiar...might be John...oh yeah, have to find that Van; have to find warm clothes. Van was on side street. If I keep walking I'll come to a side street...can't be too many side streets around here. Small town, nice. Maybe live here someday, retire. Eat a lot. No more races. Lots of room to park. Lots of side streets. No parking on side streets, though; no van."
And so on. As it turned out, we walked for a while and then realized that we'd better go back and get the OTHER van so that if we had to explore half the town, it didn't make much sense to do it on foot. Once we had hit upon this tactical masterstroke, it was only a matter of time before John (who was much less out of it than I was) quickly located our missing vehicle.
We spent the afternoon listening to Pat wax eloquent and hilarious on the subject of those damn portable toilets, while we slipped deeper and deeper into the haze. That evening we ate at a Mexican restaurant that catered to people who liked to get really, really drunk. We felt right at home, even those of us who didn't have anything stronger than tap water. The waiter, who might have been the owner, greeted us in Spanish. I couldn't really deal with that, so I just kind of slumped to one side and hoped I wouldn't have to think of anything hard to say in order to get food. At one point, someone asked me to propose a toast. This was funny, because by this time I was barely capable of pronouncing my own name without consulting notes. So I said something stirring,like, "Here's to our team. It's a really great team. Yup, there are some great people on this team. That's why it's a good team." A few people coughed and a couple of people clinked glasses, before Pat rescued the occasion by presenting John and Sue with gifts for their hard efforts on behalf of the team.
I wasn't in shape, and the watch says I ran pretty slowly, but I felt like I was racing to the limit on my final leg, and was completely spent when it was over. But it wasn't just the running that was a kick, it was the feeling of being so totally focused on what you are doing that every action, every movement, every thought is purposeful and directed.
I loved every minute of it.