We headed west to Adrian, a tiny town in the Oyhee foothills just over the boarder in Oregon, with plenty of time to catch the 1:00pm start of the half marathon fun run. To get there, we had to pass through Caldwell and since we had plenty of time, i decided to loop into Sky Down Skydiving to pick up my parichut. After finding my rig and then finding someone i could pay for repacking my reserve, we were back on the road. This time on search of a good lunch spot so we could be fully charged for the race. But before we found a place to eat, Mitch decided to google the race to double check the start time. To shock and alarm, he read that the race started at noon. A quick calculation and realised that we were doomed to be late! We decided to skip lunch and make a b-line for Adrian. And of course we ended up following an old codger driving those country farm road a good ten miles an hour under the posted speed, by not before getting caught in a Google navigation loop. It literally had is loop a two mile loop right back to the road we started on. I’ve never had it do that before. We pulled into town and found parking just a few feet from the start line. Everyone was still lined up but we still had to pick up our packets so we ran to the office were they quickly found out bibs and have us our tee shirts. We were pinning on our numbers when e heard the start of the race. We ran back to the car to drop off our new shirts then ran to the start line.
Just as we approached the start line the announcer was saying that 52 runners were now on their way around the half-marathon course. As we passed I yelled “54” and we headed out to try and catch the group who had gotten about a half mile head start.
The course runs south on the highway for just under a mile before taking a right onto a 2-track dirt road, which marks the beginning of the first up-hill section. We passed the first of the tail-people here.