by Marilyn Tycer, guest community blogger
The CCRC Heritage Trail 10-Miler was run on January 11, 2014.
The Heritage Trail race was my first Clark County Running Club event. I decided to run it for a few reasons–the Heritage Trail is one of my all-time favorite routes, my training plan said I needed to do 8+ miles, I was curious about the $2 CCRC races, and my friend Chris hates to pay for races but was willing to shell out $2–so it worked out perfectly for my weekend run. The only not so perfect part? The weather was chaotic, with periods of heavy rain and wind gusts.
After debating on what to wear, I settled on shorts, a tank, a pullover, and my Brooks running jacket, and a visor, which was probably as good as it was going to get for that day’s run. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect, so I showed up about half an hour early, as suggested, and I was glad that I did, because although there was a decent amount of parking, the lot became fairly full as we got closer to race time (10 a.m.). Registration just involved signing in myself and my friend on the clipboards, and paying the fee. We stood around for a little while and used the restrooms. Shortly before the race began, the race directors reminded us that the course was open to the public, and to be considerate of other people on the trail. And then we were off!
The first part of the course was a little crowded, but farther along the trail it began to thin out, especially as the 3-mile and 7-mile runners turned around. As runners passed by one another, there were lots of words of encouragement, even between strangers, which I really liked. The 10 mile route was fairly easy for the first and last 3.5 miles, but difficult in the middle. The first and last 3.5 miles were on the mostly flat and dirt trail along Lacamas Lake.The middle 3 miles were on sidewalks through a hilly business area, past Camas Meadows Golf Course, and finally, up a long hill before we got to the turnaround. It killed our pace, but I tried to remind myself that it was good training and that I’d be back on the gentle trail soon.
After the race, CCRC had sugar cookies and granola bars (yum!). An “official clock” timed the event, which I didn’t realize until I was crossing the finish. I had timed the race using RunKeeper, but it was still a nice touch. Overall, the race seemed more like a very organized group run than a race, but it was still fun and a good opportunity. For $10, it’d be worthwhile to join CCRC and do any of their races for free (except Vancouver Lake Half Marathon, which has a small entry fee).
