Happy Anniversary!
25th wedding anniversary – how to celebrate? Turns out our original plans wouldn’t work, either because things were reserved too far ahead for 4th of July, or too expensive, or wouldn’t fit in the middle of the week. But Reggie’s a very good sport – he agreed to do the Flat Half with me, on Sauvie Island just north of Portland.
Mind you, Reg hasn’t done any running since last fall, when he did do a little training for the trail run in California. So we did a test walk the Sunday morning before the 4th, with just a little running. He knew it was going to be slow. My friend, Sarah, was going to ride with us to the race – I just told him that I’d make sure Sarah had the keys, so she didn’t have to wait for us just outdoors (it was forecast to be hot).
I carried my camera, and we got lots of pictures of the race and us running it. Sauvie Island is mostly agricultural, with some beach accesses. Lots of lots of summer fruit here, all the way to corn in the fall. The Flat Half is once around the island; there is also a full marathon of 2 laps around the island.
25th wedding anniversary – how to celebrate? Turns out our original plans wouldn’t work, either because things were reserved too far ahead for 4th of July, or too expensive, or wouldn’t fit in the middle of the week. But Reggie’s a very good sport – he agreed to do the Flat Half with me, on Sauvie Island just north of Portland.
Mind you, Reg hasn’t done any running since last fall, when he did do a little training for the trail run in California. So we did a test walk the Sunday morning before the 4th, with just a little running. He knew it was going to be slow. My friend, Sarah, was going to ride with us to the race – I just told him that I’d make sure Sarah had the keys, so she didn’t have to wait for us just outdoors (it was forecast to be hot).
I carried my camera, and we got lots of pictures of the race and us running it. Sauvie Island is mostly agricultural, with some beach accesses. Lots of lots of summer fruit here, all the way to corn in the fall. The Flat Half is once around the island; there is also a full marathon of 2 laps around the island.
Turns out, we took two vehicles, for Sarah ended up having to get back to Newberg before 11:00 – her finish times was 2:12.17 – she did great! Some more pics:
Going on south on the east side of the island -- there was no shade. The next water stop finally had cups again (the previous two had none -- thankful we carried our own G'ade)!
Around the far southern end of the road is a farm/fruitstand/craft store. They are one of the big sponsors of this race. The course goes through their gate and around the big barns. We wished it would run out along one of the rows of raspberries!
Every year the farm has a huge corn maze in the fall. We got to see some of the course -- the postcard in the goody bag (with a discount to this year's maze) shows last year's complexity. Time for some aerial photos to learn the course now!
The end is near! We could see the parking lot where the cars were, then the course goes around to come in the back side of the park. One of the ladies from my weight training class passed us out there...
This race has a history of being slightly disorganized. There were over 300 day-of-race registrants. They ran out of T-shirts, medals, and the second and third water stops – cups. Seems like that is something that could have had a quick fix, with the hot weather and that many more runners, and a small store on the island. We carried our own G’ade – something I learned my 2nd year running Los Angeles marathon on a hot day – the races often mistake how much people drink. This year, they had a volunteer after the chip removal writing down bib numbers, and they are supposed to mail the medals to us. Sarah and I were glad we picked up our shirts and chips the day before!
Post-race treat here really is a treat – strawberry shortcake! Mmmmm… They also have bananas and oranges and Gleucos and standard post-race food, but the strawberries are the best!
We had some strawberry shortcake, headed back out to the parking field. It took almost as much time to leave the field as it did to run the half-marathon! But we finally got on our way, and had our anniversary lunch at Sweet Tomatoes. That’s a post-race treat, too! Then home to get cleaned up, and we headed out with our daughters to the St. Paul rodeo, another anniversary tradition.
And after the rodeo, comes a great fireworks show!
Happy Anniversary to me and Reg!
