Race for the Animals

This past weekend some of my family members and I were able to get together for another 5k race. We've been training for the Hood to Coast relay race and these little races help us to stay motivated and keep up our training. We've got less than 6 weeks til the big race.

The race for the Animals was held at the lower Macleary park just out of downtown Portland, also known as forest park. The park is at the base of a huge wooded hill and I soon realized that this race was going to be on a hiking trail and most of it was going to be uphill.

Grandpa & Grandma came to cheer us on and watch the kids.

Brent did the 10k race.

Robert and I before our race.

All the 5ker's.

Emily, Robert, Wendy, Michael, John, & Amy.

Brent came in 4th place in the 10k race.

I came in 18th place (out of 120+ people) for the 5k race. And I beat all my family members accross to finish line! Oh, and I'll have you know that my time was not 1:04:03, the 5k race started 30 minutes after the 10k race. So I came in at 34:03 which is slow for me but half of this course was up a dirt hill and the other half was down a uneven rock trail. I was just happy to finish without spraining my ankle.

I beat my brother John by 66 seconds!!!

Robert came in next and had a great time for someone who hates running up hills as much as I do.

Amy (my sister-in-laws sister) finishing her first race ever and she loved it.

Wendy did great and loved the uphill dirt trail (she's crazy).

Michael (Wendy's dad) crossing the finish line of his first and last race ever.

Our cheering squad, Bailey & Caden.

Father & Daugter

Brother & Sister

After the race the kids went up on the bridge to look at the runners below.

Funny things I noticed from this race:

First, the shirtless man with the bright orange shorts wasn't there. He's been to all the other races I've been in and I kind of missed him. Next, this was the race for the animals so there were a lot of vegitarians, vegans, granola's, and hippy's of each kind in attendance. All these characters brings me to my second point, this was a very smelly race. I recall passing several people and as I would take a deep breathe in of life saving oxygen I'd get a whiff of their odor and it was nasty. I think these hippy people do one of two things; they don't shower that often and if/when they do they don't use deoderant. Thirdly, these animal loving women didn't see the need to wear bra's and sports bra's must be unheard of. I just can't even imagine running up and down those hill with little to no protection, ouch. And lastly, the boys stepped it up in this race. The fast men all ran in the 10k race. This was nice because the 5k race had 15 women in the top 20. What was not nice was trying to run up the mountain (that's hard enough) and then you have one of these super fast 10k boys coming running down the mountain towards you trying to get to the finish line. This could be very scary at times when the trail was only 2 feet wide, not the best thought out plan by the race planners.

Overall, the course was challenging and some of the hood to coast courses are like this so I'm glad I did it. But I'm not going to do this race next year, the risk for injury is too great.