a couple of weekends ago, we drove all the way north to run in douro vinhateiro’s annual race. we’d been talking about it for over a year now, the seductive idea of running along the douro river and feasting our eyes on hills upon hills of luscious vineyards in one of the prettiest unesco heritage sites of the country…

so we booked the trip, laced our running shoes and headed off to régua, converging on top of the bagaúste dam with thousands of other early risers. while my brother and i did the 6km race at a leisurely pace, taking the time to stop along the way to take photos and enjoy the views and blue skies, p. sweated his ass off on the half-marathon with the pros.

as an extra motivation, and being on portugal’s most famous wine region, wine tastings were taking place during (!) and after the race, and many people stopped to enjoy the free drinks! :D

i’m not a big fan of wine, but luckily one of the race sponsors was fruut, makers of all-fruit dehydrated snacks. they even had my favourite flavour! :)

in the end, p. crossed the finish line up after 1h31m, exhausted from the effort and especially from the unforgiving heat… but proudly wearing the neatest medal yet!

sadly, no medals for us… but we got something nice too, that brought back some sweet memories. i’ll tell you about it on another post! :)