Race for the Roses Half Marathon

It's been a crazy week for me and my family. We unfortunately had a death in the family so we quickly made plans and flew out to Oregon for the funeral. The service was yesterday and while sad it was nice to see my extended family and remember Bill who was my grandmother's cousin and my godfather.

Today I was signed up to run the Boulder backroads half marathon, the Decision to skip the race to go to the funeral was easy but I was really sad to miss the race. I love the Boulder Backroads half, it's well run and a nice course. I emailed the race director to let them know that both my mother and I would not be able to race and they offered to transfer us to their fall race free of charge. I am so grateful and happy to get a chance to run in the fall.

Because I was still bummed about missing (another) race, I checked runningintheusa.com for races in Oregon. I was so excited to see that there was a half marathon scheduled for today in downtown Portland. So just a few days ago I signed up for Race for the Roses (fun fact: Portland is known as the city of roses)


Unfortunately this race has an early start at 7am and I was staying in Eugene the night before so I had a 2 hour commute this morning. With having to pack up, drive and check in before the race my alarm was set for 3:15 am. It's not the best way to get yourself ready for a race but it was worth it to get to race a half marathon. After missing last months half I was determined not to miss out on another.



Even though I ran this all on my own and had to get up way too early I really enjoyed this race. It was nice weather, well run and Portland in the spring is just beautiful. They had nice tech shirts, roses and medals For every runner.


My only complaint was that the 10k walkers were finishing at the same time as I was finishing and many were walking 4-6 across. I don't mind walkers but I wish more were mindful of the other racers trying to finish. My favorite part of the day was watching the people who were obviously finishing their first half marathon so full of joy and pride for what they had accomplished, it made me happy just to witness so many people reaching and exceeding their goals. As for me, I am happy to report a PR even after no so stellar race prep (travel, lack of sleep, poor nutrition, whiskey toasts, no taper, etc). My time (according to garmin) was 2:02:36, I am getting closer to beating that 2 hour mark, maybe next time....but that will have to wait until after ironman, I have bigger fish to fry before then, but more on that later.

What time would you get up in the morning for a race?

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