Sunday, November 25, 2007

Seattle Half-Marathon: A Review

We did it!

We ran the half-marathon this morning at 7:30 am with a finish time of somewhere just under 2:30 (it was just over 2:30 last time, so I'm improving).


Unfortunately I couldn't bring my camera with me so this is a picture I swiped off of the official website from last year (when it rained). It didn't rain this year - it was beautiful, sunny, and not as cold as we thought.

We started off with an unexpected 1-mile warm-up run because we missed the bus. After we got there about three minutes too late, we decided to jog over to the other bus stop in our neighborhood to check out the times, then came back to the first bus stop and took the next bus which got us there just in the nick of time (we were one of the last to cross the start line). The warm-up jog was great. I realized right away that I had one too many layers on so while we were on the bus I had time to take off the middle layer and put it around my waist and re-situate my race numbers.

The race itself was very invigorating and a pretty route. They took good care of us, with lots of volunteers, more-than-usual porta-potties, a Gu stop, and first aid stations everywhere.

Race highlights:

1. Running past the homeless shelter. This was the biggest crowd in the first hour and they were very enthusiastic. This was also a highlight of our first half-marathon.

2. Interlaken Blvd. It's a notoriously big bad hill, but oh-so-pretty and takes us through a forest with big tall beautiful trees.

3. Getting to within 2 miles of the end with 20 minutes to get there to make our goal time (2:30).

4. My Studly Hubby's creative encouragement in the last two miles ('you'll have plenty of time to be slow when you're DEAD! - or at least when we get to the finish line').

5. Witnessing TWO arrests in the last two miles... we're pretty sure they were not race participants (hecklers?).

6. EATING at the end (they provide lots of food and food samples), and then getting kicked out of our choice breakfast place because we were being too 'impatient'... we must have looked really impatient! I thought we were just sweaty but maybe they interpreted it the wrong way.

Well it was a very big and exciting adventure for us. We had a lot of fun and will definitely do it again.

4 comments:

Eric said...

Yippee.

...You got kicked out of breakfast.. Your metabolic rate must have been too high... I have all these visions of how that happened...

Big Earring wearing waitresses, pulling a manager aside,"psssttt.. those people are just to impatient for breakfast."

"I just don't think they will be able to wait for pancakes, let's boot them."

Oh fun.

My best events are ones I've been early for. My worst, I was late...

I'm super Proud....

Honestly, I may be more proud you got kicked out of breakfast.

J-Funk said...

Eric - Hahahaha, you made me feel guilty. It sounded better to say that we got kicked out, when actually we chose to leave because they were so extremely rude to us (probably because we were really sweaty, but also because we wanted a table real bad and let them know that, over and over). Although I'm pretty sure that at that point we wouldn't have gotten served either way. And we weren't even getting a table, which is what led to the altercation which led to us leaving. BTW, the name of the restaurant is Cyclops, in case anybody is wondering where not to go for breakfast in Seattle.

Peggy said...

Congratulations!!!

After living in Minnesota for so long, coming face to face with rude staff is such a shock to me, even now.

mwz said...

Good job. 13 miles is a long way to run.

I'm glad you weren't arrested for being impatient during the run.

BTW, did you make your goal time?

mwz

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