Bucket List · Bucket list route
Hood to Coast
Twelve people, two vans, 199 miles from the shoulder of Mount Hood to the Pacific at Seaside. Nobody sleeps. Everyone runs three legs. The vans smell indescribable by hour twenty. It's the best team experience in running.
- Distance
- ~199 mi
- Team
- 12 runners, 2 vans
- Legs
- 36, three each
- Duration
- ~24 to 32 hours
- Teams
- ~1,000
- Finish
- The beach at Seaside
Hood to Coast is the original and largest relay of its kind, running from Timberline Lodge down through Portland, out through the Coast Range, and finishing on the beach at Seaside where a thousand teams' worth of people are having a party. Each runner covers three legs of varying difficulty, and the vans leapfrog ahead to hand off.
What makes it a bucket list item isn't the running. It's the twenty-four hours in a van with five other people, the 3 a.m. handoffs on a dark logging road, the specific insanity of cheering for your teammate at mile 140 while eating a gas station burrito. Relay culture is its own thing and this is where it's most concentrated.
How to get in
- LotteryThe team lottery
Teams enter a lottery, historically in the autumn for the following August. Thousands of teams apply for roughly a thousand slots. One person registers the team and the lottery is at team level, not individual.
- CharityCharity team entries
Guaranteed team places are available through the race's charity partners with a fundraising commitment. This is the standard route for teams that miss the lottery.
How to not hate your van
- Assign van roles before you leave. Driver, navigator, timekeeper, and someone whose only job is making sure the next runner is ready.
- Legs are rated by difficulty. Leg 5 down the mountain is a quad-killer, and the hardest legs go to the people who genuinely want them, not the fastest people.
- Sleep whenever you can, which will be in a van, in a field, at a middle school, for forty minutes.
- Baby wipes, spare shoes, and a trash bag for wet kit. The van becomes a biohazard and being organised about it is genuinely appreciated.
- Reflective vests and headlamps are mandatory at night and enforced.
Questions runners actually ask
How does the Hood to Coast lottery work?
Teams enter as a unit, historically in the autumn for the following August, with thousands of teams applying for around a thousand slots. Charity team entries are the guaranteed alternative.
How many miles does each runner cover?
Three legs each, totalling roughly 13 to 20 miles per runner depending on the leg assignments.
Go to the source
Entry rules, dates, standards, fees, and odds change every single year, and the interesting races change them the most. Use this guide to build the plan; use the official site to confirm the details before you book anything.
If this is your kind of thing
Need the races in between? The hard part of a bucket list year is everything else on the calendar: the qualifier, the tune-up, the long run with a bib on.