Labor Day Half Marathon 2013!

Labordayrun.com

I'm officially done with 9 out of my 13 half marathons this year. Only four more to go, I can do this!

This time it was the Labor Day Half Marathon in Redmond, WA. It started and finished at Marymoor park. I picked up my race packet the day before the race in Seattle and they didn't really have anything fun in the bag, just tons of ads for the sponsors and some other race discount fliers for next year.

The race started at 9:00AM, my least favorite time of day for any half marathon during the summer time anyway. It was already so hot before the race even started, it was estimated to be 82 degrees that day. If I run at the pace I've been running lately with my knee injuries, I knew it was going to be super hot by the time I was going to finish.

I struggled this race, for some reason it seemed so much harder than all the other races I've done. There were a few factors, no on course entertainment, not very many people cheering along the course, the route was boring and it was sooooooo hot and the water station at mile 10 was out of water by the time I got there, what?!?! Those were just a few things that didn't happen, but they did and some of them are what they are and you just can't do anything about it.

The course itself started in Marymoor park, like I said and then we ran through downtown Redmond over to Willows road, which is a pretty big road, so there were cars driving by and kind of noisy. We ran by the golf course, then we turned down to head towards the Sammamish River trail and took that back to Redmond and to Marymoor park.

The finish of this race was my favorite part, not only because I was finishing, but because I was the only one running towards it the last 200 meters or so and all of a sudden I hear footsteps behind me and I look back and this guy is trying to pass me at the very end. There were a ton of people at finish line watching and I turn to the guy as I'm running and go "oh hell no" and I just start running as fast as my legs will go and he is doing his best and we just sprinted to the finish and I BEAT him!!! Everybody was laughing so hard and he came over to me afterwards and told me thanks for the encouragement at the end! It was really fun finishing like that, but I was beat, probably shouldn't have done that, but oh well, I enjoyed it.

They had a band playing and some booths with vendors and a Mac & Jack's beer garden. I didn't bring any cash, so I just walked around the booths for a little bit and headed back home.

As far as my knees went, I did much better than I thought. I was wearing knee supports on both knees and downed three Advil before the race and three more half way through and I made it to the end without too much pain. I feel like the supports definitely helped and I hope that I'll be able to finish my challenge for the year as I had wanted.

Hope to see you run!

Keili

Muddy Buddy Seattle 2013 race!



http://muddybuddy.competitor.com/rock-n-mud-challenge

I wasn't really going to do any mud races this year, since I'm running so many halfs, but then the Muddy Buddy race came along. This is the first year since I think 1993 that the Muddy Buddy series came to Seattle. I only heard about this race because I ran the Seattle Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon earlier this year and the Muddy Buddy partnered up with them. When I went to the Expo for the RNR half, they had a booth there where you can save 50% on the sign up fee and you get an extra medal for running both the RNR and the Muddy Buddy race and I'm all about my race bling, so I signed up for it.

If you haven't heard about this race series, its all about running with you buddy, it could be anyone, but you have to stay together the whole time and cross the finish line together. Now I have to be honest, I don't really have many friends, I know its weird, but its true. I really only know people who I have at one point worked with, so I had asked my great friend K from work to run with me and she agreed!!! I was so excited to finally have somebody to do a race with. It had been a while, we did one last December together. This race kind of snuck up on me, it just happened to be on my sons birthday, so I wanted to run the earliest waive possible at 8:00 to be able to come home and get ready for his party.

Since the race was sponsored by REI, the packed pickup was at their flagship store in Seattle the day before the race. Unfortunately my buddy had a leg injury that needed stiches and she couldn't run with me, so I was worried that they wouldn't allow me to race since I didn't have a buddy and I really did not have anybody else to ask to run with me. I e-mailed the race director and asked if it was possible for me to just get assigned with somebody else who didn't have buddy or if I could just race by myself. The great news was that either was going to be fine, whichever option I chose, so I decided to just run by myself since I was under a strict time crunch.

Once I got there the parking was easy and super close. My original waive time they gave me was 8:45, fortunately I got there around 7:30 and they let me switch my waive times to 8:00AM as I wished. They had a cute costume contest, the winners got a pair of Keen shoes and REI had set up a photo tent for before and after pictures, so I got my before picture taken and off to the starting line I went.

I think this race had about 12 obstacles, I did complete all but one of them. I just don't have the upper body strength to do rope climbing, it did have knots in them, but they were just way too far apart and I couldn't pull myself up, I did try though.. Most of the obstacles were pretty much the same as usual, there were a couple that had to do with working together with your buddy, at those stations they did have a volunteer to help, I had a very nice gentleman who helped me across one of them. It was really nice seeing the buddy's help each other and encourage each other and go all the way to the finish line.
One thing I was disappointed about is the lack of mud, if you are going to call a race "Muddy" buddy the race better be muddy, right? Well, there was only one mud pit at the very end and even then as you can see from the picture, I didn't get very muddy.

I did have five people ask me where my buddy was :( Every time I had to explain the situation, even the announcer at the very end said "is she running herself, where is her buddy at?" Great, thanks for announcing that I have no friends to the entire audience!

I did have lots of knee pain thru the race, I realized that the pain was much worse on the rough terrain than it was on the asphalt or concrete. I'm glad that I ran it, but I'm not sure if I would do it again, maybe if I did really run it with a buddy it would have been more fun.

Keep on running!

Keili