Seattle Slew

The Rock 'n' Roll Seattle Marathon and Half-marathon sold out at twenty-five thousand. Of the marathon, there were 5633 finishers: 2564 male and 3069 females. I'm proud to say I was one of them! Official time 6:10:59. Not my best time, and certainly not what I had hoped, but it's not my worst marathon time either.

This was my fifth marathon finish (!) and I hope I'm learning from them. One of the things I will do differently for my next marathon is mile repeats during training. And I really need to add more weekly miles, with three twenty milers and maybe even a twenty-two miler. I just get too fatigued during the race. The best I did in training for the Seattle marathon is one twenty miler, with a maximum of 40 miles for the week. I'm not planning any vacations between now and November, so hopefully I'll stick to my plan.

But let me tell you about RnR Seattle. It was great! Well organized and Seattle is a fun city to be in. SD and I stayed at the Westin, which is downtown and happened to be the official hotel. We were riding in the elevator when I noticed a man wearing a cap with a penguin on it. Then I noticed that he looked familiar. Yep, it was none other than John Bingham, the most famous penguin of them all. I told him how much I enjoy his articles and he politely asked my name. He wasn't running the race, but said he'd be at the start, "so wear something distinctive." I told him I'd be wearing a yellow top. :-) I didn't have the nerve to ask if I could take his picture for my blog, but I got an opportunity the next day at the expo.



The expo had a lot of exhibitors and I spent money like I had it. I got a pair of recovery socks, only I bought two pairs cuz they offered a special price and included two pairs of running socks. The recovery socks were WONDERFUL and I wore them as soon as I paid for them and didn't even want to take them off when I went to bed. I bought a souvenir running cap with the RnR Seattle logo. It was overpriced, but cost less than a jacket. I also bought a new pair of custom orthodics. But perhaps the best thing I got was a DVD on Chi Running. They were having a special on the book and DVD combined, so I bought them both. The promise of running long distances pain-free was too good to pass up.

Seattle has really good restaurants, so carbo-loading was no problem! Pasta, gnocchi, and rice all went well with salmon. My sister Debi lives in the area, so we had dinner together the night before the race and then I went back to the hotel for an early bedtime. Everything was laid out, with my race number pinned to my shirt and chip attached to my shoe. The race started in Tukwila at 7 a.m. and buses were shuttling the runners from 4 a.m. til 6.

Of course, I couldn't sleep and got up around 3:30 in the morning. The shuttle buses left from my hotel and I walked right on at 4:15, no waiting. At the start, there were very few people and I entered the 24-hour Starbucks (hey, this is Seattle) and had a bowl of oatmeal and a latte. I don't normally drink coffee before a race, but I needed to wake up.


Afterwards, I wandered around. I had planned to meet-up with Michele, but she wasn't there yet. There were tons of portapottys and I actually was the first to use the one I was in. I don't think that's ever happened before. Then I warmed up and stretched, then visited another portapotty. Why does nervousness result in an over-active bladder?

It was getting close to start time, so I took off my jacket and sweat pants and deposited my gear bag with UPS. One last trip to the portapotty, but there was still a long line minutes before the scheduled start, so I got out of line and found Michele.

Because of the slew of participants, start times were staggered a minute apart depending on what corral you were in. Michele and I were in corral 28, which meant about a half-hour wait before we crossed the starting line. I think it was more like an hour in actuality--I shouldn't have left the portapotty line! The staggered start made the course less congested though.

Finally we were running. I had a loose goal of running 5:40, which I thought was realistic. My plan was to run conservatively and save my strength. Michele and I took walking breaks every four minutes; so far so good. At mile 2 I stood in line for the only portapotty. I would have gladly gone in the bushes, but there were police directing traffic and I was afraid of getting arrested. So I practiced my Kegels until I could finally get relief.

Michele was running with a girl from her running group and a friend of that girl's. I caught up with them after they stopped for the portapotty. We ran/walked and I seemed to be on pace for that 5:40 finish. We ran along Lake Washington and somewhere around mile 6 we saw an eagle sitting on a tree limb watching the proceedings. It was incredibly close and a real treat to see.

The marathoners and half-marathoners ran together until mile 9, when we split off to run across the Lake Washington floating bridge. We were in the express lane, which is in the center so we didn't have the "on the water" sensation. It was more an "on the freeway" sensation, because cars were driving in both directions alongside of us. I was concerned that the drivers would have their eyes on us and get in an accident, but to my knowledge there weren't any problems. To our right we could see snow-capped Mount Rainier. Michele explained that locals say, "The mountain is out" when it's visible. She's even closer to it in Tukwila.

It was fun to run with Michele; I feel like I know her so well from reading her blog these past three years. I remember when she ran her first marathon. Today she was wearing her water backpack and I remember when she bought it. Now that's she's a Marathon Maniac I've lost track of how many marathons she's run, but I figured I could learn from her. Around mile 18 we ran across a bridge and she would pick a seam in the road and run to it, then walk to the next seam. She wasn't tired yet, but wanted to rest before she needed to. The sun was shining relentlessly and my muscles were tiring. It was too hard for me to start running again, so I just continued to run.

There were a lot of bands and they were good, but you really only hear them when you're right there. In between it's just you and your thoughts so I turned on my iPod. Occasionally I'd get text messages from one of my running friends here in Paso and that was nice. She was tracking my progress online. SD was also, but he stopped getting reports after mile 9 and called me occasionally to find out where I was. He caught up with me at mile 13 and took my picture. Michele wasn't too far behind me and I asked him to take her picture, too.



There were three u-turns on this course and the cruelest one was mile 23 when we went past the finish at Qwest field. We were on the Alaskan Viaduct, which just looked like another ugly freeway to me. Michele was ahead of me at that point and I was just trying to keep one foot in front of the other. I stopped once to put on some Biofreeze, which my bro-in-law snagged from the nurses office at work. My right knee was starting to ache, so I took a Tylenol at mile 24 as a precaution. I saw Michele as she was heading the other direction, towards mile 25. She asked how I was and I told her I was delirious, which caused the woman behind her to smiile.

Finally I was heading back to Qwest field. It was uphill, so I continued to walk. Then I saw a Team in Training coach pacing a small group. I fell in step with them and when they stopped to walk, I ran past them. I should have taken that Tylenol sooner. Then my phone rang. Oh for Pete's sake! I knew it was SD and I curtly told him I was on the bridge, about to head down the hill to the finish line. I didn't know that he wasn't able to track me any more. It was a steep downhill toward mile 26 and so I walked, but at the bottom I picked up the pace. There was a woman ahead of me and I sprinted past her, then past the man in front of her. You can see them in the picture below. That sprint made the difference between under 6:11 and over it. Every second counts!



Something dropped from my water belt, but I wasn't going to stop to get it. Probably a water bottle; I could replace it. I crossed the finish line and raised my arms in victory. I walked on and got my medal, then looked for SD. I reached for my phone and realized that I had dropped it in the finisher's chute! I told a volunteer and she laughed and let me retrieve it. There were still runner's coming in and I had to be careful not to ruin their finisher's picture. I edged along and picked up my phone in the middle of the lane. I crossed the finish line a second time and the announcer said, "I think she was here already."

I found SD, then callled Michele. I found her and Eric and we said goodbye. I was exhausted and headed back to the hotel for a much-needed nap. Then SD took me out to dinner at Cafe Juanita, his favorite restaurant in Seattle. It was a great way to end the day.