If you know any real estate agents on a personal level, you know how stressful the job can be. When things come up in a transaction, you need an agent who is cool under pressure and has the endurance to see that a buyer or seller is taken care of, from the start of the transaction to the finish. Many of our own agents have a plethora of stories to share.
Many real estate agents liken a real estate transaction to a marathon. A steady pace is required to see that the home you want is bought or sold in the fastest way possible while making sure your clients get what they pay for.
So it should come as no surprise that many agents take to extreme sports to both relieve the pressures that come with being an agent and to engage with a skillset many great agents innately possess. Brett Burns knows about the figurative marathon of a real estate transaction along with the literal marathons. It might surprise you to know that Kinoko’s Brett Burns is an avid endurance athlete.
The Providence Cancer Institute Hood and Portland To Coast Relay, held in Oregon on August 26th of this year, is the most popular and biggest running and walking relay race in the world, with participants from over 40 countries. The relay helps benefit funding for research for cutting-edge cancer treatments.
The event, affectionately referred to as the Mother of All Relays, is a 12-person relay race that entails 199 miles running or 130 miles walking from Mount Hood’s lofty peak to the Pacific Ocean’s beaches in the town of Pacific City, OR. The event has been sold out for 30 years in a row, and on lottery day for 23 years straight.
History of the Hood and Portland to Coast Relays
The first Hood To Coast Relay took place, August 7, 1982 on a full moon, with 8 teams of 10 runners. Simple spray paint marks were made on the road to indicate exchange points, exactly every five miles. A group of running friends, led by Bob Foote, were looking to test themselves in a fresh new challenge, and without knowing it, were making history.
Bob, with his incredible long-distance running expertise (35 marathons and 13 ultras) was thinking up ideas. He dreamed up a notion to run from the City of Portland, where his family had resided, to another favorite weekend destination: the beach!
A group of runners and competitors decided to begin at Timberline Lodge in Oregon’s Mount Hood National Park and finish in the charming seaside city of Pacific City. Bob knew that as a dedicated runner, he and his fellow runners would appreciate it as a difficult, unique, and genuinely memorable event!
So, when presented with the opportunity to join the race, Kinoko’s Brett Burns jumped at the chance, “My running/training has always been for personal growth/enjoyment/sanity, however as soon as I was asked to join a 12 person 200-mile relay across Oregon, I was in!”
However, with the Mother of All Relays, running is one of the many things participants were concerned with. On top of physically running each of their own legs of the relay, each team has to coordinate the logistics of moving other relay runners to their different legs of the race.
Brett summed is as a challenge, “with so many hurdles outside of the running part (missed exits, locked keys in car at the first stop, went to the wrong exchange, got in a fender bender all before 10am the first day) this race was the definition of being about the journey not the destination.”
People can view life through an array of lenses, and the vantage point gained from perspective can color our approach to our future endeavors. To some, a race exists to be won, but for Brett, the experience was just as imporatant as the goal itself.
In total, his final thoughts about the race were that, “30 hours in a van with 6 other people, 3 legs of running (16+ personal miles), stunning PNW scenery, very little sleep, limited food, backroads and midnight runs made for one crazy trip.”
We at Kinoko applaud Brett’s amazing achievement and the inspiration it gives us to try and challege ourselves to undertake difficult journeys. The path to a goal matters just as much as the goal itself. Some of us have often made it out to Bay to Breakers, but maybe we will try something a little more serious like Escape from Alcatraz, or even the San Francisco Marathon (for 2022 of course, you need to work up to that distance, unless you’re Brett).
We’re happy to call Brett a teammate and proud of his efforts. Brett shows the same determination and tenacity when he is working for his clients in the Bay Area; and this embodies what we strive for here at Kinoko: dogged dedication to helping you on your journey.
Contact Brett today to hear more about how his unique set of skills can help you achieve what you want with your home. You will be happy you did.