Another Yakima River Canyon Race Report (Read 489 times)

If you look at my log, you will see that I was significantly undertrained for this race. But, I did it anyway. I set the usual goals for the race. Have fun. Finish. Have fun. Don't finish last. Meet some people I see online. And most important have fun. Nothing in there about projected time. Last year was a new PR for me at 7:26:48. Everyone in both my offices and my house had the crud last spring and I started coughing about three days before the race. I kept having to stop going up the hill because I couldn't take a deep breath without coughing. This year, I didn't get sick before the race so I expected to do better. Stretch goal – 6:45. Realistic goal – 7:00. Happy goal – anything less than last year. As I write this, final results aren't posted but it looks like 7:15 and somthing so I'm happy. We left home Friday morning to head up to Yakima. Since everyone says not to change your normal routine before a race, I did what I would normally do on a Friday afternoon in Yakima. Visited wineries. Tasted wine. Had fun. We cut the afternoon short to get to the packet pickup at the Selah Civic Center and the Marathon Maniac Reunion meeting. What fun. I met and talked to several people I've met online as well as a few I've met in person. Saturday morning I was up way early to get ready for the race. Since I'm slow and walk more than run, I was able to get into the unadvertised early start at 6 AM. That meant we needed to leave Yakima about 5 AM to drive to Ellensburg for the race start. Folks, it's dark out there at 6 AM when there aren't many street lights. I was a little concerned about the first part of the route where we made a couple of loops on country roads before getting to the Canyon road. Last year, I just followed the crowd, but this year I knew there wouldn't be a crowd until later. As it turned out it was light enough to see where we were going and the sun came up over the hill within a mile or so. I stayed with the walkers through the first few miles until we got onto the Canyon Road. One of the guys started jogging then and I pulled ahead of the others on the first hill. The canyon is absolutely beautiful following the river. At one point, I could see a herd of mountain sheep on the hillside across the river. It's a net down hill with a couple of significant uphills along the way. Because of the banked highway for the turns, my left hip and knee were bothering me after a few miles and I ended up walking more than I'd planned. I kept wishing for more left curves because it seemed like most of the curves went right and that seemed to bother my knee the most. We had wonderful support all along the course and there was a sea of yellow and red Maniac shirts. With a two hour head start, I was just past the 10 mile mark when the first wheelchair racer passed me. He ended up finishing in something like 1:46 and commented as he passed that I must be fast because I was ahead of him. The first runner went by between the 12 and 13 mile mark. I ended up first in my age group again. It's not hard to do when you are the only one in the age group. It also meant that I was the oldest woman in the race. I'm not sure why the old gals aren't still out there since the old guys still are. We had one male finisher in the 80+ age group and three in the 75-79 age group. It was a perfect day, and I feel great.

Wow, this race sounds just beautiful. And so far it sounds like the RAers who ran this had a great day under perfect conditions...who could ask for more? Great race, RR!