Two Halves Makes a Whole

At least that is what they taught us in school right? In this case it might not exactly be true. Saturday was the Inaugural Seattle Rock n Roll Full and Half Marathons. I signed up for this one right after finishing my first half marathon on April 18 in Wenatchee. Looking back, it is probably not the smartest thing I did - by the time it rolled around I felt like I was over training and not entirely excited for the run. I decided to stick it out though and my wonderful husband came with me to chauffeur me around. It was crazy over in Seattle. The run was sold out with 25,000 people, there was a Seattle Sounders game, and the gay pride parade! It took us 5-6 hours just to get to Seattle, pick up my race packet at Qwest field, and get to the hotel. Since there is practically no such thing as free parking in Seattle this is how Jay and I roll: park in a construction zone! Don't worry, they were done working, Jay stayed with the car and I was not gone for long.The run started at 7:00 so Jay got up and dropped me off early. Luckily we had stayed in SeaTac and took the back roads to the start in Tukwila. I am ready to go! Of course we did have to stop in North Bend on the way over because I had forgotten my socks! It would have been a horrible 13.1 miles w/o socks.

Good thing we didn't come from the other direction: look at the traffic! Those school buses are full of runners being shuttled to the start.

The run itself was quite the experience. I was in corral 25, I think there were 32 or 33 total. That meant that even though the race technically started at 7:00 my corral didn't start until approximately 7:45. Running with so many people is a challenge. Every time I felt like I got into my zone, someone would start walking in front of me and I would almost run into them. The entire 13.1 miles felt like an obstacle course. I made it though! So two half marathons equals a whole marathon right?....okay probably not. :-) In the future I will try to remember not to schedule two big races two months apart.

Jay found more free parking to pick me up. I am not quite sure where we were, but I almost couldn't find him. Running 13.1 miles makes my brain stop I think. Here I am at the car. Still smiling!
Instead of using timing devices that have to be turned in (can you imagine collecting 25,000 timing devices?!) they gave us disposable ones that went through our shoelaces. They had our number and race on them. Pretty cool.

We stopped for lunch in Issaquah. I ate this whole pizza. Then I had a blizzard in Cle Elum. :-)


Here are my two race medals so far. We will see how it goes from here.