2012 Lacamas Lake Run 4-Miler

Sunday morning marked the 9th annual Lacamas Lake Run.  For those of you who enjoy brevity, it was well-organized, the course was beautiful and fun and well-marked, and the hill at the end was very hard.

For the rest of you, here’s the play-by-play of my Lacamas Lake Run.

I woke up early Sunday morning, ate my bowl of Triple Berry-O’s, and then got a late start out to the race, confirming that Triple Berry-O’s are not my friend (at least not digestive-wise… taste-wise, we are BFFs).  Traffic is good Sunday at 7:30 AM though, so it turned out okay.  Once I got to Camas High School, I was greeted by copious amounts of extremely bored looking teenagers, directing me to a parking spot.  They did an excellent job of helping me get my car parked, and a terrible job at looking happy about it.  They clearly did not understand how lucky they were – most teenagers would kill for a volunteer job directing traffic early on a Sunday morning.

After I got my race number and made one last bathroom stop, the bag-check lady more than made up for the sad-looking parking lot kids, by being extra cheerful and friendly.  Really, I truly appreciate all the volunteers that are at these races, and am extra-impressed when they’re so happy and nice to everyone.

I did a quick warm-up, and headed to the starting line a little before 8:30 for the 4 mile run.  The announcer did a good job of trying to pump-up the runners, and the runners did a poor job of responding.  It was a good 300-person crowd, just not a lot of “Woo Girls,” I guess.  If you don’t know what a Woo Girl is, watch this really crappy YouTube clip:

The announcer at least got the bunch of us to do a somewhat-decent countdown to the start, and we took off from the track.  As usual, I hadn’t even glanced at a course map prior to the start, so the whole race was a fun surprise for me.  It started out on the roads around the school, but then we jumped onto a trail that led down near the lake.

A young-looking girl was about one hundred feet ahead of me the entire race, and she seemed pretty strong on the hills.  I got tired of looking at her after a while, so I decided to catch up with her on the downhill, and then see if I could match her uphill-strength.  Of course, this was assuming we would ever reach anymore uphill.  The mid-section of the race had so much downhill that I started telling myself it would just keep going downhill and I would beat this girl and everyone else and it would be fantastic.  I did catch up with her, but the rest of the stuff I just said did not happen.

Instead, the downhill eventually did come to an end, and the last mile of the race was more-or-less uphill.  At least it felt like it was that far, I was kind of “in the zone,” so no guarantee on the details here.  I should clarify – there were actually two zones that I was in.  The first three miles consisted of a kick-butt, runner’s high, I’m-doing-awesome, kind of zone, and the last mile was more of a hungry, dehydrated, I-wish-this-was-a-5k, kind of zone.

And so I ended the race by dragging myself up onto the track for one last 300 meter slog, that did not in anyway resemble a finishing kick.  Luckily my finishing slog accomplished the same thing as a kick, just not as fancy-looking (or as fast).  I can’t wait to see my finish-line photo!

The best part of my post-race experience was getting my bag again, because the bag-check lady still looked really happy.  I hung out for a while longer, enjoying some Dave’s Killer Bread and peanut-butter, and stretching out.  When I finally made it back to my car, my dog was angry at me for leaving him there, but I shared Dave’s crust with him and we were on good terms again.  The bored-looking teenagers were gone, so I escorted myself out, watching out for the half-marathoners who were still on the course, and feeling very satisfied with a wonderful race.

Feel free to check out the results for the whole thing here.  Note how they misspelled my name, or if it isn’t misspelled, note how they responded to my e-mail about how they misspelled my name.  Then, if you want to read this entire blog entry over again, but on a different website, you can do that here.

Pascal wasn’t allowed on the fancy turf field, but he did a good job of waiting very patiently in our comfy LeSabre while I raced.