UW vs WSU Rivalry Clash 5k Race Recap

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

This past Sunday morning Katie, Anthony (Katie’s boyfriend) and I participated in the UW vs. WSU Rivalry Clash 5k/10k at Marymoor Park (Katie and Anthony did the 10k and I walked the 5k). The Rivalry Clash races pit supporters of two rival colleges in the area together to compete to see which school has the fastest runners. At the end of the race, the top 20 finishers on both sides from each race score points equal to their finish places. The team with the lowest total points from the races wins serious bragging rights! Sounds like a fun concept for a run to me! They even gave out finisher “medal” beer bottle openers at the end so obviously I was in. Everyone knows I will do just about anything to get a race medal to add to my collection! 🙂

Now since Katie or I didn’t go to either of the rival schools, we showed up in support of UW since Anthony went to college there. Here are some photos of us in our purple gear!

Sometimes we take photos with our mouths open for no apparent reason except to just be funny!

We were team Purple Puppies, in case you were wondering! 🙂

They had a DJ set up next to the start chute where the beer garden was after the race. And yes, those are life size versions of beer pong in the background. It was kind of fun to have some music to set the tone for the event, but they the volume was up REALLY loud and the speaker system was horrible, so you could only hear bits and pieces of what the announcer was saying.

They separated the runners from each school on to different sides of the chute to go along with the “rivals” theme of the day. It was all in good fun though!

The course for the 5k was pretty boring since it stayed mostly inside of the park. During the parts of the course that were outside of the park, I was forced either onto the sidewalk or the bike lane though, which was kind of annoying and turned out to almost be a safety issue for a few people. The course was flat and fast though so if you were looking for a shiny new PR, this would have been a good race to go for it at!

They gave us these super awkward and uncomfortable timing chips to wear during the race. I’ve honestly never seen a timing chip like this before and I hope I never do again.

Now I know what you’re thinking… “What did you listen to during the race?”

My new favorite podcast, of course! If you haven’t listened to “Not Too Deep” by Grace Helbig yet, I’d highly recommend it. It’s full of completely useless information but it will have you laughing out loud the whole time!

Katie and Anthony ended up passing me when the 10k and 5k courses joined back together. Here’s a super blurry picture of them running toward the finish line!

And here’s me FINALLY crossing the finish line! YAY!!!

Now for the medal. Ummm… I was a little disappointed at the quality of it honestly. The ribbon on mine is already coming apart! I guess you can’t expect much when the medal is also a beer bottle opener.

Here’s our signature post run medal picture.

Apparently we’re famous now because the race used our photo on their Facebook page to announce the results! How exciting!

Redhook Brewery provided free beer to all race participants. Neither of us really drink beer, so we just got them for the photo opp.

This is the second ugliest race shirt I have ever received. The first one was from the Cosmic Run 5k.

Even though the shirts for this event were beyond ugly, I actually thought the race bibs were pretty cool and a nice colorful addition to my collection!

All in all, I don’t know that I’ll be doing this race again. I thought the swag was a little disappointing, the course was boring and it was unorganized. The price was right ($25 on Living Social) and the company was even better, so it was still time well spent!

Here’s another review on this race by my friend Katie. Make sure to check it out! 🙂

Questions of the Day:

Did you do any runs last weekend?

Do you have any runs coming up?