Glacier National Park and Half Marathon

Man... I'm so behind on blogging! Where has this summer gone?

I went to Glacier towards the end of June and it was absolutely amazing. I had never been, and so I used the excuse of doing a half marathon through Vacation Races to go and I convinced my friend Chelsea to join me.

We flew into Kalispell and got bumped up to a truck from the much smaller vehicle we had originally rented. I'm glad Chelsea was driving, because that thing was huge! (And she really enjoyed driving it, so win/win.) We stayed at a lovely Airbnb with a very nice couple in Columbia Falls the first couple of nights. I'm going to mix up timelines a bit because it's been a while. I know the first day, we went ziplining, which was super fun. And I think we explored some cute little shops. On Thursday, we went on a hike to Avalanche Lake and explored the park some, including going on a horseback ride. Exploring the park that way was neat, but man... that works your legs!.I got pretty sore.

Luckily, we had a day to recover from that before we had to run. On Friday, we went over to East Glacier Park Village to a motel where we got a little cabin. We were originally supposed to only stay there Saturday night after the race, because it was already booked Friday. (It was really hard to find lodging with this race going on!) Luckily, somebody cancelled and since I had let the manager know we were also interested in Friday, we got to stay there and had a much shorter drive to the bus loading for the race. We were also able to explore the park a little more, pick up our race packets, and drive the course.

The race was absolutely beautiful. So, so gorgeous. There's a pretty intense climb the first five miles, but man...awesome views. Can you believe these are pictures that I took literally in the middle of a race?

I stuck with Louise and a couple other Galloway people in addition to Chelsea for those first five miles. At that point, everyone else kind of went ahead as it started going downhill. I stuck with Mandi, a Galloway gal who has run with my group when she's there as she's coming back from an injury. It's been hard for her, as she's normally so much faster. But she was great company and super supportive. We did :20/:30 pretty much the whole race (with a few extra walk breaks and some photo stops). There was another tinier hill towards the end that didn't even register as a hill to me when we drove it, but I definitely felt it. It seemed harder than that insane first hill! We also lucked out with the weather. Gorgeous day. But a really fantastic race. And I just love the huge community feel during the race. Everyone is so awesome and supportive and us back of the packers were really just enjoying it. And there were people around us! Big change from the Tulip Festival. My mental game was definitely better. Plus, even with the walking, a bathroom break (my first every in a race...So momentous), and the photo ops...I got a PR! My Garmin clocked me at 3:34:20 and my official time on the printout was pretty close to that. 

My first vacation race was such a good experience. Now I want to do all of them. :-) 

The only downside of the vacation was I was talking to a Galloway guy who was in our same motel the afternoon of the race and I got burned. Luckily, we tracked down some aloe vera (which was hard in that tiny town) and I survived. But boo for sunburns! Oh. And I guess the other downside was that we didn't get to stay longer. It was such a gorgeous area and such a fun race! I would have loved to explore more... especially since not all of the Going to the Sun Road was open. But I had a blast, got another few stamps in my National Park Passport and more smashed pennies. Yay for awesome vacations!