Silver Falls Splendor

At the start & no rain!

Silver Falls Marathon & Half Marathon was a few weeks ago.  I am late in this post.  I am sorry.  I'm late because I was travelling for a week, then sick for a couple weeks (see Germ Warfare) and amidst all that had a sick puppy dog and then Thanksgiving.

Amigos who signed up for
the FULL Marathon

But Silver Falls was beautiful and I must babble about it.  I did it with sis-in-law Alicia and we had mom & dad-in law imported from Grass Valley to cheer us on.  And cheering was much appreciated.  When we left Portland it was pitch black out and pouring down rain.  Not inspiring.  But a few minutes before start the rain stopped and it ended up being a perfect warm fall day.  Temps were ~50's (perfect running weather) and much warmer than the 31 degrees we started off with the year before.

The race started with a little bit of nonsense (mileage needed to make it 13.1 miles) looping around the campgrounds and such. The next few miles went along the edge of the main canyon and I'm fairly certain there are a lot of gnomes that populate that part of the park.  Mile six starts the descent into the canyon and North Falls, the first of eight or nine main waterfalls that you pass during the middle five miles of the race.

One of the two or three waterfalls that we ran behind

The whole park was in full fall splendor. Rivers running, waterfalls falling and color everywhere.  My favorite tree was a gigantic monster draped with gobs of green moss.  Moss sheathed the trunk, covered every branch and dripped off every limb.  In bright contrast were thousands of small leaves that were bright yellow and had not started to drop yet.  

Slogging along in the distance.

My final time was 39 seconds slower than last year but compared to the pack I did "better."  There were more people this year, yet I finished a bunch of places higher overall and some places higher in my division.  Which was nicey.  I also burned past a dozen or so people in the quarter mile 100+ ft climb at mile 12+.  That was fun.     

The best part, though, is that I WON!  (Refresher course on the definition of winning: Finish, do your best, have fun!)   And I think I won more than last year even.  A big part of that was my cheer squad.  My Christopher managed to get to four different spots to cheer for me.  At one point he hiked in to cheer for me at the base of the long, steep, torturous hill around mile ten when we were all nice and tired.  He also scampered up a very steep shortcut to cheer for me near the end of said torture hill.  

Finished!  Showered! Won!
With my #1 fan!

On the couch at the end of the day with the Nenya Kitty
and my own personal bottle of Tequila