I haven't run this event is many years. The feature race is a 15k, with 6 mile and 3 mile options. It's a race to see many of the local runners I haven't seen in a while. I once would run the 15k twice as prep for the Eugene marathon, back in the day of "character building" runs. More recently I've volunteered, directing traffic and hopefully being encouraging and entertaining.
I chose this one as my February race because of its history, started by the late track coach of Willamette University, I used to enjoy running it and it is one of the few races in February. Oh did I mention it is a very hilly course?
The 3 mile is an out-and-back on mostly gravel road. I always felt this section of the course, when running the 15k, was the "easy" section. It came after a very long, steep uphill and before a 3 mile descent to 3 miles of rolling hills to the finish. This section was to catch your breath after the hill, get your heart rate down and relax before the pounding of the downhill and quad busters of the rollers.
What I forgot was that it is still a hilly section. After a brief uphill start, a mile long gradual descent follows to the turn around. And as we know, every out downhill means a back uphill...against the wind.
A controlled first mile produced an 8:38 pace, the second mile the uphill was steady but gradual resulted in a 9:30 pace. The final mile showed my flat land training and a couple steeper sections for an 11:25 pace and an overall finish time of 29:26.
Good enough for 12 of 91 overall and 4 of 7 in AG. With better training I could easily have moved up two places. But hey, who's competitive at this age?
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