Ramblings by me...: Apparently I forgot to post this one!

This blog is a little out of order... obviously the 4th of July came before my run on the Olympic Discovery Trail, but if I didn't write about that one when it happened, I might have forgotten some of the magic.

On the 4th of July, Dustin and I ran the Foot Traffic race. I ran the half, Dustin ran the full. It was a race that he had found and wanted to run another marathon and it worked out perfectly in the timing of my training for me to run the half marathon.

The race was on Sauvie Island, just north of Portland. We left work early on Wednesday and drove to Portland to stay the night. The race started at 6:30 am on Thursday. While most people were enjoying sleeping in on the holiday, we were up at 5am prepping to run 13.1 and 26.2 miles.

We drove to Sauvie Island, passing obvious fellow runners who were the only other people on the road at that time of the morning of Independence Day. We drove by St. John's bridge and memories floated through my mind of a long run where we stopped to take photos as we crossed the bridge.

It was a small race - the half had 1,976 runners and the marathon only had 441. It started at the Pumpkin Patch on the island and the half marathon ran a loop around the island on a two lane country road (the full followed the same route but with an out and back on another road).

We got there plenty early and had time to settle in - this included Dustin going to check out the barn and was thrilled to find actual animals in there (he thought runners were just going in there to stay warm). After about 10 minutes he came out and was thrilled to tell me about Lucy the llama... who looked as though she was going to spit on him when he pulled out his phone to take a picture. His impression of her was priceless and I was laughing off my stress about the race.

This was actually after the race, but he did his llama impression again :)

The full marathon started first, so I wished Dustin a happy run and set off to use the bathroom one last time. The line of course was long and I started the race after everyone had gone. This meant I was passing a lot of runners as I got started, which also increased my confidence. I was feeling happy that I only had to complete 13.1 miles and I was ready to push myself... I was going for a PR.

I looked at my watch as I hit the first mile and I was right on pace. For some reason I decided at that point to not look at my watch again until mile 12 and was just going to run by feel. The run felt great and I continued to pass runners. I'm not sure why I had decided that. In hindsight, it wasn't smart.

I was secretly happy that I wasn't getting passed by many women. In fact, I didn't get passed by any for a long time. The only runners who were passing me were men (in the end, I think I was only passed by 4 women total). I was feeling pretty good. Someone pointed out a bald eagle soaring ahead and I wondered if Dustin were watching it too.

I got to mile 12 and finally looked down at my watch, suddenly realizing how dumb my decision had been... I only had a mile to make up any lost time... and there was some. I knew I wouldn't be getting a new PR.. but I figured I'd try to pick it up anyway. I ran... I had a fast last mile, but it wasn't fast enough.

I crossed the finish line, got my medal and shed a few tears as I walked to the car. I spent a few minutes beating myself up, then got over it and went to watch Dustin cross the finish line.