Bridge of the Gods half marathon

I have a lot to post since I haven't written anything in almost 3 weeks.  A lot happened in August and I haven't been good at keeping up with writing here, so you are going to get at least 2 posts back to back. =)

August 10th I went to Cascade Locks, OR to run the Bridge of the Gods half marathon, which was hard!  I did not train for that race figuring that since my marathon training had my long run as 14 miles that week I would be fine.  Well, the Bridge of the Gods half is pretty hilly.  Well, this year the first half was, with long uphills.  I guess that the usual route is on trails in the hills, but last year there was a HUGE fire in that area (that residents are still angry about and talked about, some kids lit off some fireworks in the hills in September last year, during a very, very dry spell, and sparked a fire that burned 48,861 acres) that made the trail the route is usually on unusable still. If the route had been on those trails I don't know if I would have finished.

I mentioned the reasons why I did this race in my last post so I won't make this long post longer by rehashing it.  However, I will say it was my Mom's birthday, so I wrote on the back of my legs (or my Dad did). 

I met up with my high school friend at the start line and we talked about not wanting to hold each other up.  She said she was averaging about 9.30 min/miles and I mentioned that my most current long run was an average of about 9.45 min/mile (actually it was more like 9.50).  She said that sounded "heavenly."  She also said that she doesn't talk when she runs, and I said that was fine because I always run alone.  So we put an earbud in one of our ears and off we went . . . together. 

The start was going over the bridge which was pretty cool because it was a grate and you could see all the way to the river below (I have no issues with heights, by the way). 

Like I said, the first half was hilly, really just two long uphills (with corresponding downhills).  My friend has a different approach to hills than I do . . . I don't know if you remember my San Juan half experience last year where two guys walked up all the hills and then ran down them and still beat me by a decent margin.  Well, my friend had a similar strategy, slow uphill and speed up on the downhill.  This is not how I train, I always slow down on the downhill, not only am I afraid of hurting myself, but it's also when I recoup from the uphill.  Well, we were doing 8 and 8 and a half min/miles on the downhill.  I knew I was going too fast, but I thought I'd be okay.

I wasn't.  At about the 7 mile mark she got a few feet ahead of me and I just couldn't catch up.  Finally I embraced the slowness (my legs were killing me) and let her go without saying anything.  She would have slowed down if I had said something and I didn't want to hinder her.  I finished, but the last half was achingly slow.

I hadn't seen my friend since our high school graduation.  In fact, I use the term "friend" loosely.  While we were friendly in high school we didn't hang out or do anything together.  I graduated 23 years ago, and I haven't talked to her at all since then.  We follow each other on Facebook but that's it.  We had some time after the race to talk, and we discussed doing another race together.  One of those conversations that go like "That was fun, we should do it again." "Yes it was, we should totally run together again."

Cascade Locks is a tiny town.  I'm from a tiny town (well, a farm, but I went to school in a tiny town) and Cascade Locks may be smaller.  Well, looking at Google, it says it's population is 1,158 as of 2016 which is double my hometown (550), but it looks tiny.  My dad and I were going to "explore" the town after my race on Sunday, but when we went out on Saturday to get my packet we drove through the town and there was nothing to "explore." 

He really wanted to go on a sternwheel boat tour that they had there, so we did that on Saturday and that was a lot of fun.

That's my dad under the "C" on the top.

Maddox was pretty done with the boat by the time we got off, it was a 2 hour tour (I had the Gilligan's Island song in my head the whole time).  After we were done with the tour I picked up my packet and explored the finish line. 

On Sunday after my race, since there was nothing to explore, we went back to the campground and hung out there for the afternoon.  We stayed at a KOA, so there was a pool and bikes to rent.  My dad kept talking about having to rent the bikes, he thought the campground was expensive enough they could have offered the bikes for free.  Maddox had been asking to ride a bike all weekend, so I decided to rent one ($4 for a half hour) for him. 

He also had been enjoying the pool the entire weekend, so I spent some time in the pool with him and then lounged on a chair while he swam (floated, really).

There may or may not have been most of a bottle of
wine in this water bottle.

We did end up going out to dinner that evening.  And then we left Monday morning to go home, well, Maddox and I went home, my dad went to Long Beach, WA because the next week we had a family camping trip scheduled with my sisters in Bayview State Park (up near my house). 

Overall, it was a great trip.  I really enjoyed the time with my dad and I think Maddox had a blast, especially swimming.