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Runners go coastal Mail Tribune/Andrew Mariman From left, five members of the One More for the Rogue running team that will compete this weekend in the 196-mile Hood To Coast Relay. Joe Griffin, Pete Baughman, Todd Ragsdale, Bonnie Havens and Jim Cruickshank. Cruickshank is the unofficial team captain. By DON HUNT Some fitness fanatics climb mountains. Others run marathons. Others swim the English Channel. And then there are those hardy souls who participate in the Hood to Coast Relay, a 196-mile jaunt from Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood to the beach at Seaside on the northern Oregon Coast. The relay, which starts Friday morning, consists of 12-person teams taking turns running 31/2 to 71/2 miles each for roughly 24 hours. A van hauls the idle runners along the journey until it is their turn to pound the pavement. Each person runs three separate legs for a total of 10 to 20 miles. "It's like a huge slumber party from Mount Hood to the Oregon Coast," says Bonnie Havens, a Medford school teacher who has participated in the event six times. "It's great fun." Havens is part of a local team called One More For The Rogue. Most of the team members have participated together for several years and have become good friends sharing their short time together while running up and over the Coast Range mountains and on to the Pacific Ocean. "Our team is real athletic and we've got some very good runners, but it's also a fun group that doesn't put any pressure on each other," Havens says. "It's not a high-pressure competition. "And for me personally it's my last weekend of summer before I go back to school. It's a way for me to eliminate my before-school nightmares and clear out the cobwebs. I don't have time to worry about whether my classroom is ready or not." The relay features a whopping 1,000 teams and 12,000 runners, making it the largest of its kind in the world. With so many runners, teams go off at 5-minute intervals throughout the day. One More For The Rogue doesn't begin until 8 p.m. Friday and thus won't arrive in Seaside until about 7 a.m. Saturday. The local team's best time was 20 hours, 20 minutes and 20 seconds in 1995. The record time, set by a Nike-sponsored team, is 15 hours, 44 minutes and 55 seconds. With the runners having to get back on the road every two to four hours, sleep comes in short and interrupted intervals. "It can reach a point where you get a little cranky," Havens admits. "I know one time in the middle of the night I said, 'If someone sits on my bagel one more time, I'm going to bite their head off!' "But then you loosen up and say, hey, we're out here to have fun." The early intervals are spent running in the dark and, even with hundreds of runners on the road at one time, they're often spent alone. But each team's van keeps an eye on their runners and doesn't venture more than a mile or so ahead, Havens says. "And you usually have a runner within a minute of you in each direction," she says. "It's not like it's unsafe or anything." The third and final leg is always the toughest, Havens says, due to stiff, fatigued muscles from the earlier running and the several hours spent riding in the van. "It's like trying to run a couple miles the day after a marathon," says Havens, who has run eight marathons. "You don't get a whole lot of reaction from your leg muscles." Even so, the race has gotten so popular since its inception in 1982 that it fills up during the first day of registration in October. "It's a wonderful experience," says Jim Cruickshank, captain of the One More For The Rogue squad. "You develop so much camaraderie with the other people on your team and also among other teams. "As you go along, you find other teams that are about your caliber. You jockey back and forth and keep seeing them periodically and pretty soon you've got some banter going on." Other members of the One More For The Rogue team are Central Point's Jan and Joe Griffin and Kent and Terrie Gutches; Ashland's Peter Baughman; Talent's Todd Ragsdale; Medford's Ann Marshall and Janet Lacoste; Glendale's Rosa Gutierrez; and Linda Vevera of White Fish, Mont. Gutierrez, a former standout runner at the University of Oregon, won the Pear Blossom Run in 1999 and competed in the marathon at the World Track and Field Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada earlier this month. "She'll slice a few minutes off our time," Cruickshank says. Each team has its own name. Some are quite colorful, such as Bras and Jocks from Milwaukie, Deceptively Slow from Newberg, Bankers Gone Coastal from Oregon City, Too Slow to Know from Otis and Road Trash from Parkdale. But perhaps the most colorful of all is a team dubbed Dead Jocks in a Box, whose van comes complete with a coffin on top. Reach reporter Don Hunt at 776-4469, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.