Old river ramble

Well, I got back into the scene today with a 10k in West Linn called the old river ramble. I have not been racing much and certainly not training for any racing but when the race number gets pinned on, all bets are off. But expectations were low (but Sub 40 was a must ;). It was a pretty nice day, after 2 days in the 90s it was in the 70s with full sun. The course was along the willamette river in West Linn and Lake Oswego, and wound through Mary Young state park.

My only race strategy was to not start too fast and get passed by 5 people during mile 3, when I couldn't go any faster. I saw Wendy (a local all-star), and i decided to pace myself with her. It was a good plan, but I probably would have started a bit slower than the 5:39 that we ran. But it felt ok and I just went. The race sort of reminded me of a Nordic race in Bend, only you can replace XC-Oregon, with Team Red Lizard. I think all the people in front of me had red lizard shirts on, which is cool. They have a strong club up in here. So anyway... back to the race, it seemed to fly by all of a sudden we were going up hill and it was mile 5. I heard a guy breathing hard in back of me and I decided to drop that fool, and try and catch Wendy. I didn't quite catch her, but I turned in a solid 38:53. Not a PR, but hey, it's a course PR!

Next up is the starlight 5k at the end of the month. 3000+ people, along the rose festival parade route.

After the race, we biked downtown to see Barack Obama. Turns out, about 72,000 other Portlanders had the same idea. It was pretty cool, and you have to wonder if Hillary would have had the same kind of turnout. Here's the view we had. He started out the speech by saying wow like 10 times. It was a pretty massive crowd. (my first you-tube upload below).