This week my first feature film, Hood to Coast, will have its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival.

Hood to Coast follows four unlikely teams on their epic journey to conquer the world's largest relay race in Oregon, USA. Each year 1000 teams (12,000 runners) in 2000 vans cover 197 grueling miles as a relay team, putting themselves through an arduous physical journey that as an individual would be impossible.

Now, I am not a runner. Although I've known for a long time that I wanted to be a film director, I never anticipated that my first film would be about a sport that I knew very little about. When my wife dragged me up to Oregon to fill a spot on a team running in the world's largest relay race, and my father-in-law told me this was the greatest adventure ever, all I could think was, how am I going to run 17 miles?

By the time we had made it to the first runner's exchange, I knew that there was a magic to this event that needed to be captured, an energy and supportiveness that you rarely encounter. For 197 miles, we ran on adrenaline, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the energy and excitement of six people in a stinky van, most of whom I had never met.