Helvatia Half Marathon

Saturday we did the Helvatia Half Marathon out in Hillsboro. It was a beautiful morning for a run and a few thousand runners thought the same thing. Started out thinking we'd be almost an hour early, but got a couple miles from the exit and traffic was stopped trying to get off the highway for the race. We had to park over in the Intel plant parking lot and walk over to the Hillsboro stadium for the start. Natalie and I met up with Jen who has been running with us on Wednesdays since last year and this was her first half marathon. While the girls got in the prota-pottie line I went all the way into the stadium and across the football field to bag drop. As I was heading back the race started. I got back to the porta-potties as the girls were coming out and the last of the walkers were starting. Jen said she'd wait for me if I wanted to go to the bathroom, but I made a bad decision and said "no I'll go at one of the stops". Natalie took off running and Jen and I started up slowly weaving through the walkers and then picked up speed. She wanted to do a sub- 2 hour run, so we were doing great when- you guessed it- I had to go at the second water stop. Jen said she'd jog along the left and I could catch her. I never did catch back up with her, so I ran almost the whole thing alone, with three thousand other runners, but you know what I mean. At an out and back after the big hills I saw Natalie and high fived, then I saw Jen and she was a ways ahead so I sped up and realized how slow I'd been going. So the second half of the run I went much faster. It was a beautiful course and two to one girls to guy ratio, so it was a very scenic run. Came into the finish and saw Natalie- yeah! Came across at 2:01:52 good for 867 out of 2607 overall and 50th out of 97 for my age group. Jen actually ran a 1:56 for her first half on a course with alot of hills.
Speedster Natalie did a 1:41:07 good for 175 out of 2607 overall and 12th of 272 for her age group and the amazing one- she was 36th female out of 1670 girls, that's the top 2.2% for females! Afterwards, they had Helvatia tavern hamburgers or gardenburgers (Natalie and I had gardenburgers). Then to the beer garden where Jen bought us each a Drop Top. Race pictures were taken by Kevin who came out to cheer for us.

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The next day six of us met up at the club for a bike ride. We ended up doing the Mt Pleasant loop which is around 36 miles and goes along the Washougal River and then climbs a country road up Mt Pleasant that has a really good view of Mt St Helens on a clear day. At one point we stopped so Kevin could take a phone call and I unclipped one side and leaned over the other side to see if my back tire was flat and didn't realize I was on a slope and started to go over. Natalie was next to me so I put my arm out to steady using her, but I weigh 80 pounds more than her so I took us both down. Only the second time Gigi (my bike) has been laid down. And yes, my tire was flat. Next week Pacific Crest Olympic tri and one month from today the Vineman Half Ironman!!