novare res bier cafe

After our night/morning in Portsmouth we headed to Portland to do a little site seeing, eating and getting ourselves prepped for our race. Our first stop was to pick up our bibs and race shirts and then we headed downtown for a beer and a snack at Novare Res Bier Cafe; a great beer bar in Portland.

We chose our beers and decided to get the Mediterranean plate to share; so good on a ridiculously hot day.

After beers and a snack we did a little shopping around downtown and the mall before heading to Whole Foods for dinner. Yes, Whole Foods. We love the Portland Whole Foods and it has an amazing number of vegan options at the hot/cold bars as well as a burrito bar, sushi bar and burger bar (all with vegan options). We could (and have) easily eaten all of our meals at Whole Foods but we only ate three there this weekend.

After dinner we decided to go drive the course and see what we were up against. Well to start the course is on a hill and then to a short incline and then to these stairs.

I was a little nervous that these stairs were going to be a bit of a challenge for the race because they were steep and the gravel around the stairs loose. Oh well!

We made our way back to the top of the stairs and watched the sunset. Stay tuned for the race recap.