North County Wine Run

Photo Credit: Get Bold Events

This past weekend we did the North County Wine run - Half Marathon. This was my third half since doing the Holiday Half in December. I was trying out this half marathon idea back in December and decided that I liked it - even though I was majorly sore the next day and the day after and so on.

A half marathon is great because training for it doesn't take over your life - if you mean to do well. Since I have adequate ability I figured that doing half marathons would be a nice challenge. After all I have already conquered Duathlons and have done a couple of Triathlons, as well as a Century bike ride - so I can suffer with the best of them. The other thing that is not necessarily unique to me, but I do suffer from exercise induced asthma and the longer distance races are harder for me to do, but I don't let that stop me! I figure I'll just keep doing all these things until something goes out of order and is not fixable.

Okay, so I grew up here in Clark County and I know what the terrain is like in east county and I have HEARD of the terrain in North Clark County, but had not in all my years experienced it up close and personal. Let's just say that the terrain is pretty similar. Hills are hills wherever you go...some are rolling, others are steep...short, looong...but in the end they are HILLS! Are you seeing the trend here...there were some hills :) check out the profile -

Photo Credit: Get Bold Events

I want to say that the original route might have been slightly better, but I don't know. The race venue changed a couple of weeks before the race so that meant that the route was re-vamped as well. Had I been on the ball I would have saved the profile for the original route, although I don't know that I would feel better about it or not. Hills are hills!

Tom and I ran our own races, which was good for him because he would have gotten some attitude from me and I was seriously not happy. Like I mentioned before I have adequate ability and if I were to actually do things that would give me more strength then I would probably do better (make mental note...). We'll have to try to work those into our non-running days. Anway, in all the activities I have done I don't think I have ever thought to myself, "Oh, I wish someone would just stop and pick me up and take me to the finish." This one was different, I felt a lot of tiredness and I actually thought that it would be nice to climb into one of the support vehicles and be whisked off to the finish. However, to do that would mean a DNF and no race bling. Which was pretty cool...

Oh yeah...wine bottle stopper!

In the end, as hard as this race was, I DID enjoy it, but I don't think that I would do it again. There were a few spots along the route where the shoulder was either very narrow or non-existent and many people in Battle Ground drive BIG pick-up trucks! They also don't slow down a whole lot AND some of them might be pulling a trailer of some sort. I don't want to be the person that gets clipped by a motorist that is probably unhappy that "their" road is being taken over by runners. I know what it is like in rural Clark County. 

Finish times - Tom was just over a minute fast than the Vancouver Half and I was 2 minutes slower than Vancouver. If the sun had not been beaming down on me while I was within a mile of the finish I might have come in under 3 hours. One of the cadets who volunteered to be a course marshal near the finish called out that I was really close to the finish and I had to tell him that it wasn't close enough for me. I wished at that point that I was done, but I did it I ran through the finish because I don't believe in walking through a finish arch - that's just wrong!  I'm not going to beat myself up over this. In fact, I'm sooo over this race now. However, now we can measure all other races (until the next hard race) against this one and we can say, "Nothing can be as hard as the North County Wine run" and it would be mostly true. 

We'll be taking a few days off and allowing our bodies to rest and repair themselves. Next up will be the Hot Buttered Run on November and I do believe that it will be our last run for the year. 

A selfie waaay before the race started - we are still all smiles!