Turns out the 7.4-mile Kollas Cranmer road race on the Fourth of July in Hood River was just a tune-up jaunt for a group of hearty Gorge runners. They competed a week later (July 12-13) in a 190-mile team relay.
The 12-member team, appropriately named Isaac Hebrews 12:1-2, finished 28th out of 254 finishing teams in the point-to-point Ragnar Road Northwest Passage relay. The relay started at the Canadian border in Blaine, Wash., and ended 190 miles later in Langley on Washington’s Whidbey Island.
Isaac Hebrews 12:1-2 included eight women and four men. It finished in 27 hours, 16 minutes, six seconds and was ninth in its age division, averaging 8:12 miles. The winning team, the Casual Chaps, finished at a not-so-casual pace of 20:51.3.
Isaac Hebrews 12:1-2 running team members were Jackie Riley, Jennifer McLean, Tucker McManus, and Dylan Hainline, White Salmon; Seth, Marcy, and Grace Schreiber, Parkdale; Laurel Peck, Trout Lake; Joni Sohal, Josiah Sohal, and Noelle Stasak, Hood River; and Kim Holtmann, Carson. Driving, support and logistics team members were Steve Riley and Austin Holtmann.
The 190-mile race is a test of fitness for the teams. For Isaac Hebrews, it also was a way of honoring Isaac Bell, whose stage IV sarcoma cancer is in remission. Many of the team members are affiliated with Grace Baptist Church in White Salmon.
The Northwest Passage idea came from Jackie Riley, who ran in the race 12 years ago.
Marcy Schreiber, who helped organize the team, said Hebrews 12:1-2 “wasn’t into it for competition.”
“It was fun thing to do and support Isaac,” Schreiber said. “We dedicated our runs to Isaac.”
Hebrews 12:1-2 says, in part: “… we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses … let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”
One of Bell’s endurance races is the battle with cancer he’s had in recent years. Unbeknownst to Schreiber, July is sarcoma cancer awareness month, depicted by the color yellow. “We didn’t know that; our team color is yellow — we even had a yellow Suburban as one of our two support vehicles.
“We had a mixed team for fun,” she added. “Our team did great and came in way better than expected. Grace and Josiah Sohal carried our team with some great paces.”
Grace is Marcy’s daughter and Sohal is a former high school classmate of hers (Horizon Christian School). Both competed at the Class 1A state track and field meet during their prep years. “That boy [Josiah], man he is fast. And Grace, too. They were our fastest runners,” Marcy Schreiber said.
Another Horizon athlete, Noelle Stasak, competed at state for the Hawks this past track and field season. She was the youngest member of the Hebrews’ team.
“The race went great. Josiah and Grace did really well,” she said. “It was so much fun to be with them.
The course takes runners past sights of the Cascade and Olympic Mountain ranges, Deception Pass, and the Puget Sound. Teams started the race in intervals at 5 a.m. based on the slowest target times to the fastest. Each runner runs three legs varying in miles — from a couple to more than 10 in some cases.
Stasak said her final leg was the hardest. “[It was] five grueling miles all up hill. But I put all of those brutal, hill repeat workouts Coach Heather had us do to work and was able to power through,” she quipped.
Coach Heather is Heather Laurance, the Horizon track and field distance running coach.
Sohal ran four legs —three officially — two of about 10 miles each, and a short 2.8-mile leg in the middle of the night. After that leg, he also ended up buddy running with a teammate on the ensuing 9.8-mile leg.
“There were tons of hills on the second half of the race, and I only got about two hours of sleep during the run,” Sohal said. “Definitely was an experience. It was great to push my body further than before and see how it does.”
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.