This past weekend was the inaugural Wild Rogue Relay through Southern Oregon. When this race was announced last fall, I could not pass up an opportunity to run a relay so close to home. It's so close that the end of my 1st leg was about 1.5 miles from my house.

Our local running club was putting together two teams: S.O.R.E 1 and 2. (So. Oregon Running Enthusiasts).  Team 1, which later became The SORE the Merrier, was filled, so I joined Team 2, which later became SORE 2 the Coast.  There was no captain for team 2 though so the captain of 1 asked if I would do that since I had done other relays before. Sure, no problem, I said. (note to self: think before speaking!). However, as it turned out I'm SO glad I was the captain, because I used my captainly type status to invite a few non-SORE runners on the team - Econo joined us as did Ripvanracer (Dan). He just happened to be planning a trip out to Oregon during this time so it worked out perfectly. Johnny was also on the team and all the remaining members were part of our local running scene here.

About 40 teams registered so fairly small compared to most relays. The race started about 60 miles or so from my house (near CA border) and ends up 213 miles later at Gold Beach. We were in Van 2 and our starting point was only 26 miles from my house so everyone met at my place on Friday morning around 10 a.m. Our start time was 8:00, but our van wasn't going to be on duty until 1:30 or so, so we weren't rushed in the least, which was nice, as I've always been in Van 1 in my other two relays.

My 1st leg was 8.8 miles, 4:30 pm, hottest.part.of.the.day!! It was a good run though - a few sub 9's, but mostly low to mid 9's. It was ranked 'challenging' but I think that was only because of the distance, not because it was hilly. a few rollers, but nothing too bad.

My 2nd leg was my favorite: 8.3 miles, 4:30 a.m. along a quiet tree-covered single lane road with the Coquille river along my side and birds serenading me as they were waking up. Started out with some misty like fog, but that lifted quickly as daylight broke. It felt so refreshing to run in the cool of the morning, after my previous run was in the heat of the day.

My 3rd leg was the final "glory run" leg of only 3.3 miles, with part of it being on the beach. That part wasn't as bad as I thought as the sand near the water was fairly hard packed, but then when I had to run off the beach and into the fairgrounds finishing area, then you are running on dry, soft, sinking sand. But I passed one runner on the beach, so that helped us place one team higher.

here's a few pics. I don't know who these two are (but Dan and I are in the background) but this has got to be the most awesome action ever!!

Here comes Johnny!!! Just a little bit further and he'll hand off to me:

Here's Dan taking off for his first leg:

how anyone can look like this, run as fast as he does, and is fueled by poptarts and diet mt. dew is beyond me! but whatever works, right?

crazy man in our other van who got the costume leg!

we were SO lucky to have our local coffee company give amazing support along the course - they had a stand at three different locations with free whatever you wanted - coffee, hot chocolate, water, energy drinks, muffins, granola bars, etc.  This was our van exchange location at about 1:30 a.m.

just gorgeous scenery wherever we were:

Renee's final run:

Johnny taking his hand off for his final run:

coming into the finish area:

Our team:

Our finish time was 33:10. No placements or awards but we did finish ahead of 10 other teams. Except for a handful of us (me, renee, johnny, and Dave in the other van - costume guy), no one had done a relay before and about 3 people are new runners, so they were all WAY excited about this relay and really enjoyed it. This team was all about fun (the other SORE team was more competitive and finished about 3 hrs ahead of us). and I think we all succeeded in having fun!

As with any Inaugural race, there are bound to be a few errors, things that could have been done differently or better and this one was no exception. Most notably, a fast team (which was comprised of two of my sons running coaches and a some of the fastest highschool runners around!) were the very first team to cross the finish line and NONE of the finish line stuff was set up yet (like the big arch you run under) and no one was really there to cheer them in! Plus, the last 6 legs of the relay did not yet have any port-a-potty's delivered, no volunteers to record times, and none of the signs were set up yet directing the runners where to go, so they had to record their own times and decipher the leg maps very carefully to figure out exactly where to run.

and another issue that came up was the last 10 or so teams (of which we were one of them), were offered the option at Leg 31 (which was the final van exchange for our van to go on duty) to drop runners #1-#5 off at their respective starting points and just let them all run their leg, record our own times, then have runner #6 (which was me) run into the finish area. We were told this option was 'okay'd' by race officials. But it didn't sound right to us. and that's not how you run a relay anyways. It almost felt like cheating. and we didn't come this far, spend this many hours to get here, only to try and cut it short at the end. However, about 6 team chose to do this, so now there were only 4 teams left out on the course doing it the right way. I later found out that this was not an idea that came from the race officials, but rather was probably the brainchild of a volunteer who was tired of sitting out on the course, waiting for the slower teams to come through.

But those two issues aside, this was a fun relay, great course and one that I would be interested in doing again. It was fun to see parts of So. Oregon I haven't seen before and likely never would because this is the not a route you would normally ever take to get to the coast.

Sounds like a lot of fun.  You sure live in a beautiful place.

(I found that any picture that is chopped allows me to click on it and see the full thing.)

Thanks for the great report!  Let's hope I can score a job that will make it possible for me to come next year.