Portland Half Marathon!

I signed up for this race last November with my friends Lisa, Mike, and Renee.  Yes, you read that correctly, we signed up for it 11 months ago.  Who does that?!  We do!  Lisa dropped from the race several months ago, leaving Mike, Renee, and I to run on our own.  Our training was....uh....rather inconsistent and for different reasons for all of us.  For Renee, shin splints.  For me, the nasty toenail issue in August.  For all of us, fires all around Idaho completely saturated the Boise air with smoke and gave us great excused not to get out and run made us not want to run outside.  I think I speak for all of us when I say we were all ill-prepared for this race that we decided on so long ago.  I wonder if we would have all rethought our decision to run if the price for the race hadn't been so expensive; dropping $120 on a race was way more than any of us thought we'd spend for a race. For me, it was worth every penny and not just because I got to go to Portand and drink amazing beer!

Beer on Saturday at Deschutes

First things first, the packet pickup was incredibly organized.  They had volunteers everywhere directing people where to go with absolutely zero hassles with getting bibs and shirts. Renee will likely disagree with this since she accidently ordered XXL shirts (she's far from XXL), but they have a strict rule on no exchanges for shirts and I think that was pretty clear on the registration page....so that was a minor hiccup and disappointment, but again, the expo was very well organized and it was HUGE!

Fast forward to Sunday morning and the race itself.   I'm hoping to be reiumbursed for part of my race fees through Team Beef, so I sported my BEEF shirt and made Mike take a photo of me in the parking garage before we went to find our corrals at the race start.

BEEF in Portland!

I've never been to a race with corrals, so I was nervous about getting there early enough to find the correct corral.  Yeah, not a problem.  The port-a-potty line was enormous, but I also had plenty of time to get in line and get things taken care of because we got to the race start early enough.  Perhaps the coolest thing about the event this year was that they had all 11,000-ish people sing the National Anthem to kick things off.  I really wish I had taken my phone with me to record it, but I left it in the car to avoid having too many things to manage.  There was a guy standing directly in front of me who was an incredible singer!  So cool!

And then we were off!

My first 5 miles felt great...really great, in fact.  So great that I probably should have worn my Garmin for the race to slow me down a bit.  I walked a bit during mile six, ate some Goo Chomps (not my favorite, but I did my last few long runs with them and they worked ok), and continued on.  I finally broke down at mile 9 and asked someone what time it was.  Answer: 1 hour 38 minutes (the race started at 7:00).  I just checked a pace calculator and that put my average pace less than 11:00/mile.  Oops.

Things got hard after that and I did quite a bit of walking.  I ate more Goo but it didn't seem to help me much. I found a lady at mile 11 who started in my same corral (C) and I ran next to her for the next mile.  I asked her the time somewhere between miles 11 and 12: 2 hours, 17 minutes.  She said she thought we could finish by 2h 30m if we powered through.  I let her know I needed someone to push me to the end, and that's exactly what she did.  We talked about our recent races.  This was her 3rd half marathon this year and she ran her best (2:18) earlier this year.  Me: best race in 2:21 earlier this year.  Her husband ran the full marathon and was hoping to finish in 4:00.

Mile 12 came and I made a comment about this was going to be the hardest mile ever, and I was right.

I struggled through the last 1.1 miles. 

I walked.

She grabbed my hand and told me we had to keep going.

She continued to look at her Garmin and guided me through the last bit: 1/2 mile to go!  1/4 mile to go!  The finish line is just around the corner!  (why did the corner to seem to be so effing far away?!)

We crossed the finish line together and gathered our medal.  I turned to her and thanked her for helping me get to the finish...and then she was gone.

Mike was waiting at the finish line and I found him right away - that guy finished in under 2 hours!  The spread of food was incredible.  Hello, frosted animal cookies?  chocolate milk?  orange juice? coconut water? bananas?  string cheese?  grapes? candy?  I only dove into a few of the choices, but the whole spread was super amazing.

Renee finished, we got our gear bags that we checked earlier, made sure we all had finisher shirts and our 3 medals (what?) and made our way back to the hotel to stretch, shower, and find some lunch.  

Mike and Renee napped but I suddenly found myself with more energy and decided to walk around near our hotel for a bit and found myself wandering around the Alphabet District.  I ended up logging at least 16 miles on Sunday with the walking I did after lunch.   After all of that, I believe I earned every ounce of beer I drank that evening at The Green Dragon (a-maz-ing). 

I was able to check my finish time and 5k/10k splits when we got back to the hotel: 2:35:34...my 3rd worst time.  I figured out a part of my problem: I started out too fast.  My 5k page was a 10:31 average. My 10k pace was 11:19 average.  The big hill of the event is covered within that stretch of 6.2 miles.  I easily could have walked more in the first 4 or 5 miles and saved myself a bit more for th end but the spectators were in full force over that part and all I could think about was how I couldn't dare walk when so many people were there watching!  In the end, my lack of preparation combined with starting out too fast hurt my time and my pride.  It will get better again...sooner than later, I hope.

Overall, the trip to Portland was a great one for me.  I got to eat great food, drink incredible beer, and saw quite a bit of the city.  Plus, I got to see my distant cousin, Katie, for a few hours at The Thirsty Lion on Saturday, at dessert at Papa Haydn, and got myself a Portland Cream at VooDoo Doughnut this morning. Hooray!