summer

It’s been a few days since I ran the Seattle Rock-n-Roll Marathon (race was on June 25, 2011).  I figure it’s time to finally recap the trip/race.

Pre-Race Fun

We arrived in Seattle on Thursday night (around 11:30pm or so).  My cousin picks us up and we head back to her place.  After a bit of catching up in the car and with her fiance at their place, we call it a night and turn in.

Friday morning, Sam, Jen and I wake up at our usual early morning time of around 5:30am.  Since Seattle is currently 2 hours behind Wisconsin in time, it was really 7:30am, which is pretty late for Sam to wake up.  After some morning routines, we get some beverages and head down to the race expo.  The race expo was fantastic.  After we pick up our packets we decided to shop around and see what they had to offer.  Sam was digging all the free stuff and the exercise equipment that was on display.  Sam and I both tried out some kind of straps that you lean back on and pull yourself up on.  Sam ended up swinging like Tarzan on them.  The lady running the booth looked confused.  I just laughed it off, it was hilarious to me and wasn’t hurting anything, so have at it.  After 5-10 minutes of strap work, we go on the search for more goodies.  Muscle milk is nasty, btw, even the free kind.

After the expo, we get dropped off by the Space Needle to start our day of tourism.  My cousin (Katie) heads back to her house to start/continue her work day.  The Space Needle was amazing.  Hardly any wait time to get to the top and it was a clear/blue day so we could see forever.

After the Space Needle, we hit up the Seattle Duck Boat tour.  It was really fun.  The drivers are all crazy and sing and dance around.  Sam loved it and we got to see most of the city.

Some pictures from Friday’s adventures:

On top of the space needle

Sam and the needle

On the duck boat tour

Sam and I on the Duck Boat

Race Day Fun

Side note before I begin…  This was my first marathon wearing Vibram Five Finger, Bikila shoes.  Very happy with their performance and will definitely do it again.

On race day, our plan was to wake up around 5am and be down to the starting line by 6am.  Well, I forgot to set my alarm and we overslept.  Woke up at 5:30, which is when we were supposed to be out the door.  After quickly thrashing around for everything, we exit the house and head over to the starting line area.  It’s in a town about 15 minutes away from where we were.

We get to our exit and find it closed with police on both ends.  Turns out they closed it so emergency crews could use it during the race, if they needed to.  By this time it was around 6:15 or so (race start was 7am).  We see other people start to exit their car and try walking down the exit ramp.  You could actually see the starting line from where we were.  The police that were there were yelling at the runners to get back in their car.  When I say yelling, I mean, literally YELLING.  Almost verbally abusing some runners.  All of the police were on motorcycles and a couple of them were zipping up and down the shoulder screaming into their megaphone/microphone things yelling at people getting out of their cars.  They were threatening to give everybody tickets if they got out.  My question was, without ID on them, how could a ticket be issued?  I could say my name was Bob Jones.  Anyways, the police went WAY overboard in my opinion.  I completely understand that having people walking down the highway/exits is definitely not safe for drivers or the people walking, however, it was a parking lot out there and no cars were moving and the starting line was only a couple hundred yards away.  For the police to be verbally abusing everybody just trying to get to the race they paid over $100 to participate in, was, in my mind, uncalled for.  They, however, had their orders, and who am I to argue with that. On a side note, I will be expressing my opinions in the race survey…

The police tell everyone to take the next exit and “go around”.  Well there was a line of cars as far as the eye could see in front of us and in back of us.  “Just going around” was going to take hours.  It ended up taking about an hour and a half.  At around 7:30am (30 minutes AFTER the race began) we got as close as about a half mile from the starting area.  Katie and I kiss our loved ones and jump out of the car on a side road and start trucking it to the starting line.

We get there to find out that all the marathoners had already started and they were onto the half marathon group now.  We go as far up as we can in the corals and take our place amongst the halfers.  The gun sounds and FINALLY, we’re off and running.  Our official start time was 7:52am.  Almost an hour late. Wow, with that stress behind us, we focus on the task at hand, which, at that point was to not get disqualified and make it to the first check point at mile 9 in time.

We ran the first 10 miles pretty darn fast.  Averaging around a 9 minute pace through out.  We were zig zagging in and out of the half marathoners and every once in a while we saw another marathon bib in the crowd.  That made us feel good.  We were finally starting to catch up to the marathon runners.  We saw our cheering crew (Jon, Jen & Sam) at mile 5.  It was great to see them.  It made us speed up even faster and rejuvenated us.  It’s amazing what seeing your family on the course does for you.  At mile 9, the group split and the halfers went one way and marathoners went another way.  FINALLY, we got to see where we stood in the pace standings.  After a couple hundred yards of looking for pace runners, I spot the 5 hour pace flag about 50 yards in front of us.  We sped up a bit and took him down.  After that, we settled into our pace, which was between 9 and 10 minutes per mile.

Miles 9 through 12 were an out-n-back on a floating bridge and seemed to take forever to finish.  One of three different out-n-backs on the course.  Each of them were equally gruesome.  Note to self, not a fan of those on a race course, at all.  When we got to mile 12, Katie told me she had a twinge in her hip and foot.  We slowed down a bit and walked for little while during the water stop.  After we picked back up and started running again, mile 13 was on a freeway and the road was slanted down and to the right.  Running on a slanted road was difficult.  Makes your stride get all screwy and didn’t help Katie’s hip twinging.  Miles 14 and 15 took us off the highway and through downtown Seattle.  It was nice to get back into the city and see all the people cheering and bands rocking out again.  Not much to look at between miles 10 through 14 at all.  We got to mile 16 and found it was back on a freeway and the road was slanted the other way, down and to the left.  Again, very hard to run on that surface.  We saw our cheering crew again at mile 16.  This time, we stopped to talk to them.  Katie’s hip and foot were causing a ton of pain for her.  We chit chatted for a few minutes, I had an energy gel and ran with Sam to the water stop.  He loved getting a cup of water from a lady and drinking it with me on the course.  It was so sweet.  After the pit stop, we kept going, though, we walked for almost a mile after mile 16.  Each time Katie tried to run, her foot and hip made her stop and walk.  We find a medic on a bicycle and ask his advice.  He tells us that a medical tent is just a couple hundred yards ahead and we should just stop there.  So, we walk over to the tent and she explains her ailments.  We were expecting them to stretch her out or something, but the lady at the tent just told her how to stretch her hip herself.  Katie explained about the (what felt like) HUGE blister on the arch of her foot was really more painful than her hip.  The medic said they could take the shoe off and check the blister, but it would probably only make things worse.  So, she decides to take a couple Tylenol and push through it.  We walk for another half mile or so and saw the 5 hour pace runner pass us.  Our goal time was 5 hours, but with Katie in pain, I knew the goal was to finish, not to meet any time.  We just kept pushing on.

At around mile 18, the Tylenol kicked in and Katie’s pain subsided a lot.  We start running again and kept running until the next water stop around mile 20, which is also where we saw our cheering crew again.  I waved Sam over to me and he jogged with me for 50 yards or so.  Really cool.  We move on past mile 20 and pick up our pace again back to around a 9 to 10 minute per mile pace.  At around mile 22, we’re joined by a lone runner on our tails who tells us our pace is perfect and he’s going to run with us for a bit.  So, we chat with him for a bit and the three of us just keep pushing on.

Somewhere between mile 22 and mile 24, my foot started to hurt.  Thinking back, I don’t recall which foot hurt, but I remember wincing with pain a few times and sort of limp running for a half mile or so.  It stopped hurting after mile 25, so I didn’t give it another thought.  Miles 23 through 25 was another out-n-back and Katie and I both swear those miles were longer than they should have been.  I’m sure being 25 miles into a run had nothing to do with our judgement at the time.    We walked once during that stretch, nearing mile 25.  I like to think that during the walking time at mile 25 we picked out our targets to take down before the finish line.  I point out a guy a couple hundred yards in front of us.  I told Katie “that guy, in the orange tanktop, he CAN’T beat us”.  So, we started back up again and took him out in about a minute.  We kept this up for the last 1.2 miles of the run.  We picked out and took down a bunch of runners in that time.  It’s fun to have a target to focus on, even if they have no idea we’re after them.

The last half mile, as we came into the downtown area again with lots of spectators, we picked up our pace even more and were running around an 8 minute per mile pace.  We finished very strong and our finish times are EXACTLY the same.  As we crossed the finish line, I made sure my foot was in line with Katie’s in the hopes that we could get the same times.  Success!

We stop to pickup our medals and get a finish line photo taken.

Finish Line Photo

The bananas and oranges and other goodies were further down the line, so we kept moving through the area to get food and water.  Got my first space blanket too.  I was excited about that.

I won’t bore you with the final details, I’ve already been extremely verbose with this recap as it stands, no need for anything further.

Will I run Seattle again?  Sure, absolutely.  Sam and I made a promise that he wants to run it with me.  So I told him the next time I run it, he can run too.  So, I guess I need to find out the age requirements and make plans.  He’s 5 now, so we have plenty of time.

Will Katie run Seattle again?  I believe her exact words were “One and I’m done”. 

Our official finish time was 5:02:21. Not too far off from our 5 hour time goal.  Very happy about that.

It was really a really fun race, regardless of how it started.  If you’ve read this far down, thank you and I’m sorry for being so long winded.

Here are some more pictures I scavenged off the official photo website. We’re buying a few of them so I don’t feel bad posting these smaller ones.