Redding Marathon

A few weekends ago, hubby ran the Redding Marathon, 26.2 miles from Lake Shasta Dam down to the Sundial Bridge in Redding. The race started Sunday morning so we drove up on Saturday, about a 4 hour drive. I needed to go to the bathroom so the road sign said there was food so we stopped at an El Pollo Loco in Fairfield.  That was the first time we have eaten there because we don’t have one near us.  The food is very good.  I got chicken avocado salad which was very good. The chicken was so flavorful and moist. We got to Redding about 2:00pm.  My girlfriend was running the race too. They’d both been training together for the race, running for months to work up to 20 mile training runs.  She was coming up later with her husband and son who is a friend and classmate of my son, so we picked up both their bibs, shirts, and packets at the Fleet Feet store in Redding.

Sun Dial Bridge

We stayed at the Best Western Hilltop Plus Redding which is near the Sundial Bridge.  The rooms were very clean and the hotel staff was very pleasant.  There is a restaurant called CR Gibbs American Grill which is attached to the hotel.  Included in the price of the room is breakfast.  The breakfast was good.  There was scrambled eggs, pancakes, French toast, fried potatoes, sausage, yogurt, fruit, oatmeal.

We had never seen the dam before so Saturday afternoon we drove up to the dam and walked across it.  That was pretty cool. It was weird there were several micro climates along the dam. One minute it was warm the next it was cold and so on all the way across the dam.  Hubby also wanted to drive up to see the riverside trail where the race would take place but the access road was so rutted and steep that we didn’t want to take our car on it.  A four wheel drive car would do better on that road.

Hubby didn’t want anything heavy for dinner the night before the race so we walked to the Habit Burger Grill that was a couple of blocks away. It was a long walk, and there was a line out the door when we got there, but the hamburgers and fries are really good.  It was too cold to sit outside and the outdoor heat lamps weren’t working so we finally snagged a table inside.

Shasta Dam

The next morning hubby got up early, ate breakfast and then headed off to the race.  Our friend’s husband drove them to the start of the race.  The boy and I went down to breakfast.  We were going to hang out in the room but his friend wanted to go to the mall that was near the hotel so we went to the mall to hang out a bit.  His friend wanted to get some Nike compression socks from Foot Locker.  After he bought his socks we went back to the hotel to hang out until we needed to pick up hubby at the end of the race.

Hubby runs slow so around 2:00 pm the boy and I headed over to the bridge to cheer hubby on and greet him at the finish line.  Not long after we got there my friend came in around 3:10 but hubby wasn’t with her.  She said they ran together up until mile 14.  They saw each other again at mile 21 when she passed him where the trail double backs.  So the boy and I waited and waited.  The staff said there were 2 guys out there and one of them was limping.  I thought it might be hubby since he is pushing 60.  After a few more people came in hubby finally came in at 3:58 but not limping.  The booths and music people were packing up their things.  We did manage to score a whole peach pie from the Marie Calender's booth and some cookies. 

Mount Shasta with hardly any snow on it.

The weather the day before was cooler but race day it was a little warm out to be running 26.2 miles.  Who would have thunk that it would be so warm in January.  We had some unseasonably warm weather the week before.  So hubby was sore but not as sore as our friend was.  She had to take an ice water bath.  Hubby took a cold shower and then we watched the 49ers/Broncos playoff game.  After the game we went out to dinner with the boys friend at Cattlemen’s Steakhouse which was a couple doors down from the hotel.  I haven’t been to Cattlemen’s in years.  My family would eat at the Cattlemen’s on the Siskiyou mountains on the way up to Oregon when we would go visit family in Oregon. The food was really yummy.  I got a mixed meat brochette.  We went back to hotel. 

The next morning we went down to breakfast with our friends before we both headed back home.  We went back to our room packed up our things and started home.  We stopped at Safeway on the way home to get some road food and to gas up at the Safeway gas station.  We were on the road around 11:00am.  Hubby getting lost as usual.  He finally found Highway 5 South.  We arrived home around 3:00pm.  Always good to be home.