Hood to Coast Communications

Portland, Oregon - August 23, 2014 - Hood to Coast communications director Martin Anderson gets the latest informatino from radio operator Tara Harper about a missing teenage runner on the course.

(Jamie Hale/The Oregonian)

At 6:30 a.m. Saturday, a teenage runner on the Hood to Coast Relay went missing. Her teammates on the ground were panicked, but the communications team inside the Hood to Coast Race Control center in Southwest Portland remained calm.

They get 20 to 30 missing person calls every year, communications director Martin Anderson said, but every one eventually turns up. The team has heard everything, from runners simply veering off course to runners falling asleep in portable toilets.

"[The race] starts off very disciplined, but as it goes on things start to happen," Anderson said. "It's the nature of the event."

His team, a small group of volunteers stationed in the conference room at the Hood to Coast headquarters, isn't necessarily in charge of coming up with solutions, they're simply responsible for keeping lines of communication open between the volunteers, staff and emergency personnel along the 199-mile relay course.

The system they have in place to do that is impressive.

The crew uses UHF, VHF and ham radio through a chain of repeaters along the course. Anderson rattled off their call signs from memory: K7RPT, N7EI, W7BU and MM7R. Along with Race Control, or W7HTC, that chain is linked by the Internet Radio Linking Project.

"The primary reason that emergency radio is used for events like the Hood to Coast is that in many areas here in the Northwest, of course, we don't have cell phone coverage," said radio operator Tara Harper. "People can't just pick up their cell phone and dial 911 if they fall, if a runner collapses or anything like that."

They provide that crucial link between the people on the course and the emergency personnel, she said, keeping everybody safe and accounted for.

Radios crackled to life every 10 or 20 seconds Saturday morning, as the team tried to track down the missing runner, a diabetic teenage girl, who was racing along the High School Challenge course. She was supposed to meet up with teammates at a checkpoint down the road, but never showed up.

The Race Control team quickly determined that she was likely where most missing runners wind up – in the wrong transportation van.

The problem was confirming that. There are about 3,000 vans in use for the relay, too many to keep radio communication with. All they could do was put the word out everywhere and wait for someone to spot her.

"There's always somebody here, and there's always multiple people here, taking care of the needs of the teams that are out there having fun and racing," operator Stephen Davis said.

It's a necessary service that the Hood to Coast team has perfected over the 33 years of the race. Every runner in the all those races has been accounted for, and it's largely thanks to the team that keeps the lines of communication open.

It's an especially impressive feat when you look at the number of people involved: There are 12,600 runners on 1,050 teams this year in the main race alone, with 3,700 volunteers manning 35 checkpoints along the 199-mile course.

Finding one runner in that field is like finding a needle in a haystack, Anderson said.

But just as he said it, a call came in about the missing teenage runner: "They found her, she's in the van, she needs no medical attention."

The team breathed a collective sigh of relief. It was 8:28 a.m., nearly two hours after she had gone missing. Anderson got on the phone with the other Hood to Coast directors. Davis radioed the staff on the course. Harper officially called off the search.

They were all smiles as they transitioned out of emergency mode, but there was little time to relax. There were still about a dozen checkpoints to clear before the race was done.

Finding the missing runner was a big deal, but it only took up a small slice of their nearly 48-hour shift. "We have people here at 2:30 Friday morning, and our last person will shut the lights off and power everything down at 9 p.m. tonight, on Saturday," Anderson said.

It's that kind of hard work and dedication that keeps the event running smoothly, and keeps everybody involved in the race safe. No matter how dire it might seem, the Race Control team always finds its missing runner.

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB