Portland Trails 10k (2005)

Today was the Portland Trails 10k. Two years ago, I placed fourth. Last year I lost by 2 minutes and placed second. This year I lost by a minute and a half and ran a minute slower than last year and placed 4th. The course is not overly inspiring; it runs along the Eastern Prom path and around the back bay and then along the eastern prom path in the other direction. I like it, though. There is no traffic, it is fairly quick, there is usually a fair number of people without overly crowding the course…

I probably should not have run. I think it may have weakened my immune system enough to let me catch whatever it is that the fiancé has been miserable with this past week. I went out in the first 5k exactly where I wanted to be (17:28) but then I cramped up and dropped back to running just over 36 minutes.

There was a new sponsor this year, the Shipyard Brewing Company. They changed the race slogan to “trail to ale”, and at the end of the race had pizza from the Portland Pie Company and Shipyard Export and Captain Eli’s Root Beer.

I did not care for the picture that they used on the awards this year though; the past two years was much nicer.