Ho Ho Ho 5K

Ho Ho Ho 5K

December 6, 2015

Cost - $20.00

My next race was the Ho Ho Ho 5k in Tigard Oregon. http://www.xdogevents.com/hoho.html. Any donations and collected items would go to the Union Gospel Mission and the Oregon Humane Society. I'm a big animal lover so supporting the Humane Society was right up my alley. I sent an email to the contact address for the race because I had considered bringing my dogs to this one. I never received a reply. I decided to leave the dogs at home since I didn't want to have to leave them in the car too long if they couldn't come with me. When I showed up I noticed several people who were obviously going to race with their furbabies.

As I said in an earlier post I work as a firefighter a we work 24 hours on and 48 hours off. I worked the night before this race and had a slight sinus thing happening so I was pretty tired that morning. I decided to go without the turnouts this time thinking this course might be a little slicker and colder than the last race since we were in December.

I learned from my workout runs that layering and wearing running specific gear helps a lot. I showed up wearing running pants and a few layers up top. For a December day it wasn't considerably cold but thought that I may not have layered up enough. I showed up around 9:00am for a 10:00am race and found very few people had arrived before me. I got my race bib within a few minutes and decided I would head back to the car to keep warm until the race started. I noticed a lot of people in festive costumes including reindeer, elves, and even a Mrs. Claus. The crowd for this one was more subdued and it looked like more couples and families in attendance.

The course for this race started with a slight incline. This was no where near the hill we battled with in the first race I described. It seems any race done to the south of Portland is going to have some hill climbing involved. We made our way through some neighborhoods. I noticed there wasn't very many people staffing the course although it was marked with cones. As we winded through the course we moved to a trail around the river and park areas. This course would be beautiful in the summer time but for this time of year the path was very wet, with large pools of standing water, and slippery vegetation. 

I finished this one in just over 30 minutes. It was a solid pace but it was somewhat anti-climatic. When the race was completed there wasn't any covered area to gather. There were some seasonal snacks provided but no music and no beer. Once I finished the race I walked around for about ten minutes and decided to head home. I probably wouldn't consider this one again. I should mention this race was half the price of the previous one and there was still a t-shirt so you might be able to see past some of the short comings .

Up next: ORRC Y2K 10K