Running enthusiasts get a look at 'Hood to Coast'

"Hood to Coast," an inspiring sports saga directed by Christoph Baaden, screened last Wednesday night at Sisters Movie House, followed by a special live Skype-cast with Baaden at Thyme restaurant.

Presented in cooperation with Sisters Athletic Club and Sisters Movie House, the feature-length HD documentary details the epic plight of bold athletes during the world's longest relay race, the grueling 197-mile Hood to Coast spectacle that draws over 12,000 runners from around the world each August.

Starting on the slopes of majestic Mt. Hood and ending on the sands of the Pacific Ocean at Seaside, runners in rotating teams of 12 complete 36 stages ranging from 5 to 7 miles each. It's a wild, sometimes wacky endurance event with an air of Mardi Gras madness that receives over twice as many entries as are allowed to actually race. There are no winners and no prize money other than the endorphin-laced rewards and intense personal satisfaction of finishing what is dubbed as the "Mother Of All Relays."

Filmed over a two-year period beginning in 2007, "Hood to Coast" utilized 15 separate cameras compiling over 600 total hours of footage with a crew of 110 people.

Baaden's film focused on four teams from various backgrounds and levels of race experience:

• "Dead Jocks In A Box" featured an elite group of "past-their-prime" masters runners in it for the personal glory, chasing down their dreams by staying one step ahead of Father Time. A cardboard coffin with dangling tennis shoes bobbing in the wind strapped to the roof of their support van announces their arrival at each staging area.

• "R. Bowe" is a family team racing for the memory of a beloved brother, son and friend, Ryan Bowe, who passed away from a congenital heart defect a year earlier.

• "Heart and Sole" gathers a mob of sweet senior ladies headed up by one manic personality, 67-year-old Kathy Ryan, whose running obsessions led her to collapse from heart failure during her third stage in last year's race. She's back again with a heart monitor on her wrist, despite her cardiologist's urgent protests to slow it down after a triple-bypass operation.

"I'm alive and I'm well and I feel good and I have to be there," Ryan exclaims before the start.

• "Thunder N' Laikaning" draws its beer-loving, out-of-shape members from a Portland-based animation studio who hope to push themselves out of their comfort zones and hopefully achieve some life-changing experience.

"We're not really runners, we're just sedentary animators," joked one of the reluctant team recruits.

The legendary race was founded 30 years ago by Portland architect and ultra-marathoner Bob Foote as an event for seasoned veterans looking for an adventure. They created it for themselves to overcome the boredom of the fast, flat 10Ks, and needed its unique challenges to keep themselves going.

"It's a topographical roller coaster," claimed Foote on screen. "You plunge 6,000 feet into countryside, through city, wilderness, over the Coast Range and down to the beach. No one as an individual could ever accomplish this race, but as a team anything is possible."

The documentary showcases the surreal nature of the race with humor and pain, as waves of runners press on through the night with weak legs and glaring headlamps, into the dawn of the next day, battling private angels and demons, sheer exhaustion, sleep deprivation and mental fatigue, all to don the gold finisher's medal, dip their feet in the ocean and share in the sweeping celebration of life, knowing that ultimately they were worthy of the race.

During the Thyme restaurant Skype-cast with Baaden, moderator Tate Metcalf, himself a six-time competitor in the race, remarked on how well the director and his crew had captured the true feel and flavor of the race.

"You did an amazing job, and I thought the film was just glorious," he said.

Audience members, many who had raced the Hood to Coast before, presented an array of questions regarding the race, its colorful characters and filming process. Baaden had worked a lot in German television for 11 years, and this was his first feature-length documentary.

"We knew the film would stand or fall with our choice of the four teams, so we had a long selection process," said Baaden via Skype. "I wanted stories of why people run and needed to cover a wide spectrum of core emotions. I've always loved storytelling and being introduced to a group you don't know anything about and learning about that world. Before this film I wasn't a runner or knew anything about the runner's subculture."

"Hood to Coast" is still in its theatrical run on 400 screens across America. It is scheduled to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray this July.

For more information visit http://www.hoodtocoastmovie.com.