#goddessrun

It’s been a while and a ton has happened since my last post. Steven convinced me to chronicle my life experiences thus far so I’ve taken upon this challenge! Feel free to read the TLDR sections at the bottom if I start to ramble ha!   

I’ve moved to Portland, Oregon and have been blessed with the opportunity to continue my work with Wieden+Kennedy.

During the past few months, I’ve been seizing the opportunity to embrace the beauty of the Pacific North West. I went on a few hikes and started to run more.

Then, I decided to do something slightly crazy and signed up for my lofty goal: Bridge of the Goddess Half Marathon. I signed up back in April and the run was just yesterday! 

The last time I did a half marathon was when I was still in Shanghai; I had trained extensively with my friend Tim and managed to finish it with a time of 2hours on the dot. The race-course was relatively flat and purely concrete around the city. The only big issue I had was with the air. It was ridiculously polluted that week and I remember many of my colleagues had to call in sick and get inhalers to help their lungs. 

Bridge of the Goddess was a different matter. The race course is set in the Cascade Locks and starts off over the Bridge of the Gods. It’s a beautiful route with the most scenic views of The Gorge, mountains and waterfront. This race is catered towards women (although men are more than welcome to join!) therefore they called the race Bridge of the GODDESS instead. 

It was one of my most favorite races I’ve ever done! The weather was perfect and the crowd had a great amount of energy. 

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The Race 

The night before I loaded up on some carb. I was excited and ridiculously nervous about this race as I set my alarm for 5:45AM. I was going to meet two colleagues outside the office and carpool with them to the race site, which was at “The Gorge”.

However, the morning of the race I naturally woke up at….  freaking 6:19AM. 

“Holy shit! What the hell happened?!!?” I thought as I scrambled to toss all my shit in a bag and slap on all the race gear I had luckily laid down the night before. I ping-ed a LYFT ride and ran downstairs without even properly washing my face. Yikes! 

I got to the meet up spot at 6:32AM. “Phew. Not too late!” 

Luckily the ride to The Gorge is around an hour so I had time to shuffle the things in my bag around, eat a banana and a Justin’s Honey Almond butter (courtesy of Steven). 

Nervous butterflies were ran about as I got to the course and stood over the bridge. It was sure was scenic!

Minutes before the race started, I realized that my Spotify playlist wasn’t working. “Doh! I’m not a premium account user! I should have known that a race in the mountains wouldn’t have reception. Argh!” 

I ended up putting my phone and headphones in my handy-dandy running fanny-pack/pouch thing and took off! It’s funny, how something I once thought was so crucial to my runs can become irrelevant during the day of the race. 

I soon realized that I didn’t really need music. I had the adrenaline kicking in, the energy of the other racers to keep me going, and completely new routes/scenery that I never saw before to continuously take my breathe away.

By the time I got to the 5th mile, I was starting to feel a bit tired, but I thought to myself “Hoo! You got this! Keep going and push through!” 

I thought about a lot of things while I was running. My pace. My form. The other people around me. Why I haven’t explored the gorge some more before? If I should try to eat some glucose chews. But more or less all my thoughts were fixated on the race.  

There were some intense uphill battles that were a bit disheartening, but with the cheer of the volunteers, I managed to get by. “Slow and steady Jess. You go this.” I pushed through to the 9th mile and felt freedom! 

By the time I got to the 10th mile, I was slowly increasing my pace some more. I felt pretty good and being like every other country in the world, converted the last 3.1 miles to KMs …. 5KM to go!!! Not too shabby. 

I finished the race at a pleasant stride and the last leg I mustered up all the energy to push through. I got reached a new PR!!! Just under 2 hours to completely a somewhat grueling race. 

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After the Race

I’m still in disbelief. How did I do this? That was a little over 21.1KM of not stop running in nature. 

I’m super happy that I finished this race and went back home to take a nice comforting and well-deserved bath.

An hour later I was off to Willamette Valley and the Wine Country with Adam and Eva (haarhar, I know it’s like Adam and Eve) to the wineries! 

I checked out 3 beautiful wineries and had my share of tastings and cheese. It was a gorgeous day out and I thoroughly enjoyed their company and chatter about food and experiences in LA and NYC. 

We ended up in McMenvile to eat at the highly anticipated restaurant, Thistle. This small 22 seater restaurant specializes farm-to-table dishes with in-season and local produce/meats.

What a way to end such an eventful day!!

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TLDR