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PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The first of some 19,000 Hood to Coast runners made it to the finish line in Seaside Saturday morning. Running all day and all night in teams, they pounded the pavement from Mount Hood to Seaside in a relay format.
This year’s race was made even more difficult when running through the Portland metro area as temperatures soared to 100 degrees.
Portland Fire & Rescue Lt. Rick Graves told KOIN 6 News they responded to 6 emergency calls associated with heat illness and Hood to Coast runners. Though they were taken to the hospital for treatment, he didn’t know if any of them remained hospitalized.
Phil Miller and Blaine Pincock, who took part in the relay, said this was by far the most challenging race they’ve competed in, adding it was a team effort to keep all of the runners cool.
“[Blaine] got a long sleeve with a hoodie and I just soaked him completely to try and keep him cool for as long as possible in the race,” Miller recalled.
With both working in construction, Pincock said they were fortunately educated on the signs of heat exhaustion, which came in handy when he started experiencing them himself.
“It was about midday and I got full body shivers. That’s a really early sign that you’re shutting down,” he recalled. “So my team had waited halfway into the race and they actually had to pull me out because I was getting sick. So what we did is we had to substitute in another runner so that I could cool off.”
They added that, although there were a lot of aid stations for runners – as well as some community members parked on the side of the road with water bottles at the ready – the aid stations were only located where the next team member was tapped to run the next leg.
Miller said he would have liked to have more aid stations on long exposed sections of the relay, given the extreme weather.
“Water is a resource that needs to be shepherded, but it’s also a human right that everybody should have access to water,” he voiced. “I saw so many people running on really exposed, sunny courses not carrying water, without water on their backs, and I’ve just felt like that didn’t seem like a realistically safe way to proceed.”
With this being Miller’s seventh Hood to Coast relay and Pincock’s second, both say they are looking forward to returning next year.
“We all go into it knowing it’s going to be hard. I mean, that’s kind of the allure to it,” Pincock added. “By tackling something hard, it makes everything else that might seem hard throughout our daily lives a little bit easier.”
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Jenna Deml
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