Vineyards and hills and wine, oh my!

As promised in a previous post, I am now going to regale you all with my summer half marathon story...

Back in May, after running Bloomsday together in Spokane, WA, my friend Leila and I decided we had so much fun running that 12K that we needed to sign up to do another race stat.  Since both of our birthdays happen in July, we agreed that the best way to celebrate the big 28 would be to run a half marathon together (the first one for both of us).  We both did a little research, but Leila was the clear winner in the 'find us a race to run' game, as she discovered the Fueled by Fine Wine Half Marathon in Dundee, OR.

It was perfect, a half marathon that took runners through the vineyard of the gorgeous Oregon Wine Country, great swag for all the racers (a dri-fit finishers shirt, an insulated wine cooler bag filled with coupons from several of the local wineries, a finishers medal, and a commemorative wine glass inscribed with the race logo above), a free wine tasting after the race for all the runners featuring many of the local wineries finest wines, and best of all, it was being held in the middle of July, and was thus the perfect celebratory race for us to run. We signed up on the spot, and immediately began training for the race.  Unfortunately, since we live on opposite sides of the state, we weren't able to train for the run together.  However, we did both train on our own...and I'll be the first to admit that some days I trained harder than others, a couple long runs might have been missed here and there, and after months of training, even I can admit that my motivation to get my mileage in during the last few weeks started to wane.  But overall, when race day rolled around, I felt prepared, ready and raring to go!

When Leila, her coworker Rhonda, and I showed up at 6:30am to the start line to await the 7am starting gun, we were excited and antsy to get going.  Little did we know what was in store for us once that gun when off (insert menacing sounding 'dun dun dun' here).  Now I had gone to the FBFW website a couple times before the day of the race, and they had described the course as hilly, so I had trained by throwing a couple hills into some of my long runs, and doing cross country programs on the treadmill and elliptical any time I had to do my workouts at the gym, and called it good.  Needless to say, 'hilly' was a gross understatement on their part, and when the gun sounded, we immediately turned right and stared straight up at the first half mile, a HUGE hill.  Since it was the very beginning of the race, we powered up it, excited to get started and knowing that this first hill had to be the worst of it.  Boy were we wrong.  Once we got to what we thought was the top of the hill, we turned a corner, only to continue running up hill.  After a brief downhill run, we turned a corner only to find (you guessed it) another hill.  Since we were running on roads through neighborhoods, it wasn't all that riveting, but just when we were starting to get sick of all those hills, we turned a corner into a beautiful vineyard.  Boy were we excited!!!

(I took the above picture, and the one below, while running...am I a skilled camerawoman or what?!)

Racing through the vineyards was an amazing experience...don't get me wrong, there were still tons of hills, but since the surroundings were so gorgeous, we didn't mind them too much any more.  At one point, we even stopped and had one of the other racers take our picture in front of some of the vines.  You might think that another runner would be upset to be stopped during their run, but everyone was in such good spirits, and so many people were doing the exact same thing we were, she didn't seem to mind at all.

Now, we were having a great time running through the vineyards, but as I mentioned before, the course was still riddles with exhausting, long, steep hills.  The following doosy of a hill was the one we hit at mile 7...

...and no, that steepness is not in your imagination, or a trick of light with the camera shot, that hill went up at almost a 90 degree angle!  And to add insult to injury, once we got to the top of that hill, we took a slight right, and then went left up another hill, took another left only to continue climbing higher.  I believe it was somewhere in the last part of that particular hill that I turned to Leila and said something to the effect of "After all these hills, there better be a lot of f#$%ing wine at the end of this thing!"  Apparently I said it a little too loudly, and ended up giving many of the other racers around us quite a good laugh (someone who heard me on the course even came up to me at the wine tasting after party to ask if I had gotten enough wine...I told her 'not yet').  After that hill, it would be a lie to tell you that there were no more hills on the course, but after the 'hill from hell', none of the others seemed that bad.  I felt like I got a second wind, and Leila and I pushed our way to the finish line.

There were photographers all along the course, so they got a couple great pictures of us, like the ones above and below.

Another fun thing about the race (besides the gorgeous views and the wonderful fellow racers) were the hilarious mile markers along the course.  We didn't want to stop at every single one (it would have added at least 30 minutes to our time) but we did consent to take one toward the end of the race.

If you can't read it, it says "That last wrong mile brought to you by your friends at Crumbled Rock"...each of the 'wrong miles' was sponsored by one of the wineries at the event.  Once we hit this mile marker, and therefore the last mile, we figured 'hey, they're going to go easy on us, we only have one mile to go'...wrong again.  Up another hill we went, but luckily, the last bit of the race was downhill, and as Leila and I approached the finish line, we grabbed each other's hand, and crossed the finish line together, victorious!

It was an amazing feeling to cross that finish line...this was one of the hardest races I've ever run, but also one of the most rewarding.  We were given our finishers medals, and the victory was solidified.

Darn it, they weren't chocolate.  And yes, our Bondi Bands (which Leila's wonderful husband Tim got us for the race) say "Will Run For Wine"!  Hey, if you have a good motivation for doing something, why not embrace it?!  And embrace it we did.  We were given our commemorative wine glasses...

...and we took that wine tasting by storm!

What a great way to celebrate our 28th birthdays, and I wouldn't have done it with anyone else!              Love you Leila!

Don't we look happy?!?!?!  And why shouldn't we be?  Great wine, after a great race, does that for us. ;)

What motivates you to run a long race?