Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Lululemon SeaWheeze 2013 Shorts are here!




I had totally forgotten about them until I saw the Lululemon package at my door after work today!

SeaWheeze is Lululemon's Half Marathon that takes place in Vancouver B.C., this is the second year that it is taking place. I ran it last year as well and loved it so much that I decided to run it again this year. Unlike with most races where you get a T-shirt with your registration, this half gives you Lululemon shorts.

In 2013 you could choose from two different styles for women, you can see the difference on their web site http://www.seawheeze.com/run/shorts. I chose the RUN: Track Attack Short in size 6, these are supposed to be a little longer and have a little more coverage than the other shorts. To be honest, I haven't tried them on yet, but I'll let you guys know what I think about them. The color is super cute though, I do love the way they look, I sure hope I love the way they fit.

Drum roll please....


This year they also come in a very cute Lululemon reusable zipper bag.


Now I just need to find a nice hotel in Vancouver on Robson or closer to the water that's reasonably priced, if you have any suggestions let me know!

Are you running with me?

-----UPDATE: I did finally try them on and I love them, in fact I love them a lot more than the last years shorts. I think that this style shorts just look more attractive on me and I just love how the color pops!

Keili

Portland Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon 2013!




 I have completed the first half of my Pacific Peaks Challenge, the Portland Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon. I completed it with a time of 2:29:33. Definetly not the best time I've had, still trying to beat my very first half at the Seattle Rock'n'Roll Half :)

We drove to Portland, since its only a 2.5 to 3 hours drive from Seattle (depending on the traffic). The drive itself was pretty easy, didn't hit too much traffic at 11:00am. The hotel we stayed at was accross the river from Downtown, so my husband and son stayed at the hotel room and I went to pick up my race packed at the Portland Expo Center. The expo was really nicely put together, tons of vendors and easy to navigate through. I picked up my packed and the race shirt. I bought some GU enegry gels for the race, got some fun pictures taken at the Travellers booth and then headed back to the hotel. Just a side note, I always use the Honey Stinger Energy gummies for my choise of energy boost for the run, but since I've been doing a lot of runs lately, I've come to realize that they are just too bulky to carry around and it also takes me forever to chew them and they are so sweet that it is necessary to drink water right after. It has been hard for me to figure out when to eat them in relation to where the water stations are and I always mess it up and then end up with a super sweet taste in my mouth that's not pleasant. Honestly I didn't notice a difference with the GU VS the Honey Stinger, I went with the fruity flavors, none of them really taste great, but at least the GU doesn't linger around and you can shoot it down fast and wash it down with water quickly. This will be my new choise for running.

My husband dropped me off at the starting line around 7:00AM, the race started at 8:00AM. I always like to be early, just in case (I had a close call at the Tinkerbell Half). They had ton of Honey Buckets, which was nice, so no lines. Water, banana and bagel booths for some pre-race snack. I never eat before my races, so I always look forward to the bananas and some water, I try not to drink too much, I hate taking mid-run bathroom breaks. Then I just hung out for a while, I prefer not to check any gear, those lines can get super long after the race. I was in coral 23, which once I got there I realized was the last coral :( I don't know how that happened, but I was not happy, only because I don't walk during my runs unless it is absoultely necessary and it is so annoying trying to run around all the walkers as you try to make your way through for more of an open area.


I waited around my coral for a while, finally we heard the starting gun go off and there went the Elites and corral 1. It took just under a half an hours for them to make it to our corral, when we finally got our turn. I started off pretty easy, I was happy with my 5K split at 31:43 (you can see the breakdown of my run on my RACE page). As I got to the first bridge, which was at just under 5 miles, I stopped to take a quick picture of the river and the bridges and I got this super sharp pain in my right knee, like someone stuck a knife in it. The pain was so bad that I could not even take a step forward. Now, this was only at mile five and all I kept thinking about was how am I going to finish this race. So I started running/limping or whatever you would call that, I guess not really running, but my knee started feeling a lot better and adventually there was no pain. I'm thinking that this just must have been something weird that happened and its all gone now, man was I wrong though. I stopped at the next water station to take my GU and get some water and the same exact thing happened again. Then I realized that I was okay as long as I kept running and did not stop, super weird, but maybe common for people, I'm not sure, this was the first time its ever happened to me. Anyway, I was thinking to myself, just keep running and you'll be fine. Everything was going well, until I come to an intersection and the Portland Police stops all the runners to let the traffic go by, for about 5 minutes. What?????? I've never had that happen to my in my last 7 half marathons I've done. I'm sure this wasn't the organizers fault or anything, but first of all, I do keep track of my time and try to beat it from previous races, so that put a huge dent it that and second of all I honestly could not stop, I knew what that would do to my knee. I didn't really have a choise though, I had to stop to let the cars go by. Once we were ready to go again, I had the same pain hit my knee again and I just could not go, the pain was so excrustiating that I had tears in my eyes and a group of girls stopped to see if I was okay and if I needed help. It was so sweet of them to do that, I told them that I just need to get back to running, then I'll be fine, but its easier said than done for sure. But again, I just pushed through and kept going.


When I had looked at the elevation chart before the race, it looked like at mile 9 there was a huge 100ft climb which made me a bit nervous as I was approaching it, but it was a piece of cake, I had no problem with it at all. As I was running to mile 10 and 11, I started recognizing the area and it looked like we were coming back down towards the starting/finish line. I love that feeling of the run being almost over, I could almost see the finish line, all I needed to do is just keep going and then I saw my son and my husband!!!!!!
This was the first time they had ever come to one of my runs to cheer me on and it was a surprise, I wasn't expecting them to be there and it just made the final stretch that much more spectial. They were at mile marker 12 and I saw Chase running around from way back and I yelled his name out a couple of times before he even saw or heard me. As soon as he saw me he came running towards me, I took his hand a ran with him towards my husband, gave them both a kiss and asked Chase to run with me for a bit. He had the biggest smile on his face!!! I don't think I'll ever forget how happy it made me and how happy they were to see me. This gave me just enought boost to finish in under 2:30.


After crossing the finish line, I went straight to the medical tent and I asked if they could wrap an ice bag around my knee, which made it feel much, much better. They I got my medal and had in engraved with my name and time, the free beer line was way too long and since my hubby and baby were waiting for me, I decided to go straight to my car. They did have ton of goodies at the finish line like foil blankets, Gatorate, chocholate milk, Jamba Juice Smoothies, bagels, bananas, power bars, you name it, they had it.

I met my family just a few blocks away, thankfully I didn't have to walk too far and we drove home. I wish I could have taken a shower before leaving, but they had to check out of the hotel before they came to cheer me on. Oh well, the drive home felt much longer than when we were driving to Portland, but we made it and it felt good to take a shower and just relax on the couch and do nothing.

Overall I would recommend this run for people escpecially if you live locally. I'm not sure yet if I would do this race again or not, time will tell I guess, but I most certainly am glad I did it and I finished it and that my family was there to see me do it.

Now I need to get ready for my next race in Seattle at the end of June. I am officially 5 for 5 so far in my 13, 13.1 in 2013!!!! Only 8 more races to go ;)

Let me know below if you ran it or are interested in running Portland Rock'n'Roll and if you have had knee probablems like I had and what you did about it. My knee now feels much better, still some stiffness, but not much pain and its been three days since the race.

Keili

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The COLOR RUN Seattle 2013!


This past Sunday my friends and I ran the Seattle Color Run. We had been waiting for this run for a year, we missed the opportunity to sign up last year, because it sold out in hours, but this year we got in early and were ready to go.


If you haven't heard about this event yet, you should look into it for sure. Its a 5K and they have set up differnet color stations through out the course, where you get hit with powdered color. Each station has its own color, so by the end of it you will be all rainbow colored. They do have a finish line festival as well, where they had a DJ playing and bunch of color run employees just throwing swag into the crowd and free color packets. When you sign up for the race each racer gets a color packet as well to throw at the end with everybody else.


The race started at 9:00AM at the Seattle Center, I had went and picked up the race packets the day before, so I knew exactly where to go. We carpooled so we only had to find one parking space since its so hard to find one escpecially during an event like this. We made it there with about a half an hour to spare and found a space only a few blocks away for FREE!!! I was excited, parking in Seattle is expensive. I brought Chase with me as well, children under 5 are free. Since he is still a bit too small to run a whole 5K, I decided it was best for everybody that I put him in the stroller and then have him come out right before the color stations and run through them with me. One of my friends brought her Mom with her, it was on Mother's day after all, she was so kind to push the stroller for me while we ran.


First was the yellow station, the coolest thing was that as we were running down the street you could see a huge yellow cloud, it was all the powdered paint being thrown at people. You really had to be close to the volunteers if you wanted to get super colored, if you stayed in the middle of the crowd you really did not get much color on you. You do have to keep your mouth closed though, some of us got a mouthful and it did not taste good or look paticularly pretty on your teeth :) Next color was orange, then they had a water station exactly at the half way point, they even had their own color run branded water cups! Next up was pink and lastly Chases favorite blue.


I do wish that they had a few more color stations through out the course, the colors could have been endless, but because of the color station it did make this run fly by, it felt like the shortest 5K I've ever ran. On the map that they had posted online they showed 5 color stations, but it actually ended up being 4. In any case we had so much fun.



Hope to do this again next year, see you there!

Keili




Friday, May 10, 2013

Rock'n'Roll Pacific Peaks Challenge 2013!!!


I will be running the Portland Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon on May 19th and the Seattle Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon on June 22nd, this will award me with a very special Pacific Peaks medal and in addtion for completing two Rock'n'Roll events in one calendar year, I will also get the Rock Encore medal.


I'm so excited, I finally booked my hotel to Portland, its just a bit too far to drive for a day to pick up my race packet and drive back, so we decided to stay overnight and just enjoy a nice night out while we were there. Its only a week away and I've really been lacking on my training, I've been good about working out my legs at the gym, but running has been challenging. I've been trying to get my leg muscles stronger to prevent tendonidis, I really hope to see a difference in my time, but I have not done any long runs since my last half marathon at the end of April, three weeks ago. We'll see I'll do a race recap once we get back home and let you know how it goes.

I ran the Seattle race last year as my very first half marathon and I had a great time, so I'm super excited to be doing it again, last year I didn't stay for the concert or anything. I'm planning on staying for the afterparty this year though, to get the full experience.

Check out their web sites for all the Rock'n'Roll events, they have so many of them and they always draw tons of crowds. I believe there were about 16,000 people running last year, if you think about it, I was originally put into corral 41!!!! That's how many people there were. In addition, the more races you do, the more medals you earn, they even have international races, if you are interested in travelling to some fun races http://runrocknroll.competitor.com/heavy-medals

One day I really want to do their Las Vegas one, its supposed to be at night running down the Strip. How amazing would that be, I bet there are a lot of people cheering on, since it is the city that never sleeps, plus if you don't get a great time, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right!!!

Let me know if you've ran any of them and which one you enjoyed the best.

Keili

Sunday, May 5, 2013

May the 4th be with You!!!

I know this is a day late, but I wanted to get this out sooner than later.

We had an amazing day yesterday, lots of Star Wars stuff as you can probably guess. All thanks to my amazing husband for my beautiful boy Chase. He even rocked his new Cool Chewbacca shirt!


My husband Mark was on a business trip to London and came home on Friday with an awesome present that he found there. He just stumbled across a Star Wars Operation game at Harrods, I never even knew that one existed, but he just had to get it. So this was a perfect day for us to open it up for the first time and play and instead of buzzing you it makes R2 D2 sounds!!! I don't know who loved it more, me or Chase.


Since I had to work and Mark had just come back from a business trip he was excited to spend the morning with Chase and just enjoy their time together.

Lots of Farmers Markets in the Seattle area had opened this weekend, so we wanted to take advantage of that on this first beautiful day. They had gone to the Redmond farmers market and enjoyed the outdoor mall there as well. Hitting some toy stores was a must for them and playing in the water fountain.

I got home before they did and fixed a Star Wars theme lunch for the little one. I figured, might as well go all out. I went with the Millennium Falcon, but had lots of other ideas that I could do in the future with a cheese quesadilla (Death Star, R2 D2, etc). Its hard to get my boy to eat anything, but this surely helped, he was so excited to see it and couldn't believe that I had made that just for him. Sweetest kid, I swear.

What a wonderful day, thanks George Lucas for Star Wars!

Keili

Heroes Half Marathon 2013!



I ran my 4th half marathon this year, so far I'm on track to do to 13 13.1 milers in 2013, hopefully I'll keep it up and finish strong.

This time it was the Heroes Half in Everett Washington. Thankfully this one was super close, just about a half hour drive away. The Heroes run is dedicated to our service men and women, a lot of them were running the race as well. Overall the event was small, compared to what I'm used to. Even though they called it a pre-race Expo, I wouldn't really call it that, it was just a room on the bottom floor of a hotel were they had set up a station for picking up your packet and across was a station for race registration. There were no booths or sponsors there or anything like that. But that's okay, that's not what the races are about anyway.

There were two starts to the race, the walkers started at 7:30am and the runners started at 8:00am, the reason for the walkers to go first was so they can get the streets back open by 11:00am. Because it was my husbands birthday weekend, I decided to start with the walkers so I would finish earlier and be able to get back home and celebrate with him. I think there were about 1000 runners registered, they also had a 10K run as well, so very small compared to runDisney races that have about 26,000 people.

They did a little pre-race warm up and then the walkers lined up at the starting line. I was up front with others who were going to run as well, everybody behind us were going to walk. As the gun went off so did we, unfortunately there were no signs telling us where to go, as we got to the end of the parking lot, we all looked really lost and we asked a guy who looked like he was working there where to go and he said just head towards Marysville. Huh???? I was really disappointed in the lack of signs that they had out, there were several spots during the race where I wasn't sure which way to go, thankfully there were three friends running with me who had ran the race last year and they knew what to do, so I just let them go and followed them.

The course was so beautiful, it was kind of a gloomy day, it had been raining by my house when I left but by the time we starting running it had stopped. We ran across three bridges, mostly on the highways until we got to Marysville, we got off and ran through the streets and neighborhoods, to the water treatment facility and then all the way back the same way as we went there. That was another thing that not all the runners were respecting the side of the street that they were running on, so as we were running back, there was some confusion where we should go and what not.
Heroes Half map

They had ton of water stations on the way to the half way point, but they didn't set them up on both sides of the street. As we were running back we had to cross over the people who were still running the other way to get water and it was kind of a mess, a lot of people just chose not get any or go the every other water station. I was proud of my work, one of the branches in Everett had volunteered at the water station there and were so excited for the runners and gave high fives to everyone!

Also, if you like people to cheer you one, there was a lack of that as well though out the course, except for the finish line, because the streets were closed it was hard for people to get be all over the course, so most decided to stay at the finish line, which was fine with me.

The best part about the race for me was that I saw so many service men and women running themselves, there was even a guy running in his full military uniform including a full backpack!!!! How amazing is that, we all encouraged him on as we ran by him. There was another person running with a bulletproof vest on, I'm pretty sure those way a bit as well. The most amazing thing is that the winner of the race ran with his one year old daughter in the stroller, I saw him pass me and I was thinking to myself how fast he was, there was no competition for him. I read after the race that he was going for a Guinness Book of World Record with it and unofficially he did it. I believe he finished with 1:13. It took me twice as long!!!!! Not that I compare or anything.

Overall it was a great experience, it was hard of course with no training, I had done one 3 mile run since the Mercer Island half and that's it. I'm kind of glad though, because my knee did not heart me at all and my tendonitis was only just a bit sore, other than that I did as good as you can without training.

I've learned from my mistakes, my next half is only two weeks away, that's the Portland Rock'n'Roll half. I've been training pretty well for it, not as much as I would like of course, its hard to get the long runs in for me. I do the 3 mile runs on my lunches at work every other day and then I work out my legs and arms the other days at the gym. I'm trying to get back to my best time at the last Seattle Rock'n'Roll, so we'll see.

Keep checking back for more of my running stories,

Keili

Saturday, May 4, 2013

runDisney Princess Half Marathon 2013!




 I finally completed the runDisney Coast to Coast Challenge. It was the most wonderful experience I've ever had and I was able to cross off some things on my Bucket List.

If you've read my previous posts you'll know that we were in Disneyworld for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon Weekend. It was a very special year for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon, it was their 5 year anniversary, I love that they designed a special medal just for that and that all the commemorative items had the years on them (2009-2013).

 The half marathon was on a Sunday and because I had a bad experience and almost missed the start time for the Tinkerbell Half Marathon 5 weeks earlier, I had set my alarm to 3:00AM, 3:05AM and 3:10AM, just to be sure. I had actually had a dream the night before that I woke up an hour after the start time and rushed there and what not, so I wanted to make sure I would wake up on time. I got hardly any sleep, in fact I was up about 10 minutes before the first alarm would have gone off anyway. I had set up all my running gear and costume the night before again and just got ready and off I went. The hotel had a special gathering to wait for the bus for all the runners in front. There were already a bunch of people there when I got there. I do have to be honest and say that they did not have the pickups scheduled very well. We stayed at the All-Star Movie Resort, this is a third hotel in the All-Star Resorts, all the buses that were sent to pick up the runners kept filling up at the first two resorts so none of them made it to us. We waited for what seemed forever, at least 45 minutes, finally there was a cast member who called the bus driver directly and asked them to come directly to the Movie Resort and then we got onboard and off we went, I felt bad because it did not fit all the runners, so others had to wait even longer.



Once we got to Epcot the walk was faily close to the bathrooms and water station before the starting line. Then it was about a 10 minute walk to my corral, I was again in corral "A" and this time since I had more time and there weren't that many people in my corral, I was able to go to the very front of the starting line. Maybe this sounds weird, but it was a really cool feeling to be right there with all the Elite runners and the stage was right next to it, rather than seeing it on the big screen.

Sean Astin was just hanging out there while waiting for his interview, and I yelled out "Sean can I get a picture with you" and he said that he had to finish something and that he was going to be back, I figured that was never going to happen, but it did, he finished his interview and came back looking for me, so I got a picture with him and another girl right next to me got one too and then he left. I was so lucky and it was so sweet of him to do that. Ali Vincent, the first biggest loser female winner was there as well, she was so nice and talked to all of us and took ton of pictures.


I waited for about an hour or so and then it was time to start. All the Elite runners lined up in front of the ribbon and we all got to stay behind it, there were about 10 of them or so. Once the fireworks went off we were ready to run, at first I tried to keep up with all the people in the front, but I soon realized that wasn't gonna happen, so I slowed down my pace to make sure I can finish the race. It started out on the freeway and at 5:00AM it was already so hot and humid, which I was not used to being from Seattle and all. About 5 miles in I saw the sign for Magic Kingdom, it made me smile and pick up my pace just a tad. The first characters we came to was all the villans, there were about 7 of them or so, the queen from Snow White, Kruella from 101 Dalmatians, the mean sisters and the Mom from Cinderella. I had to stop for them since there were so many of them then came Lightning McQeen, this one was for my son and then we entered Magic Kingdom. It was still dark and Main Street and Cinderellas Castle were all lit up, tons of people cheering on. I was able to get a couple of pictures in front of the castle and there were a couple of very nice EMT guys who took my picture on the side of the castle, as we ran through Tomorrow Land and Fantasy Land and Frontier Land, that's where I saw Jesse from Toy Story, had a get a picture with her. then it was the castle, the line for Minnie and Mickey was sooooo long, but I had to wait, I could not, not get a picture with them at the Castle. The girl behind me took a picture of me and the back of the castle and finally I got a couple of pictures with Queen Minnie and King Mickey and off I went. Tons of photographers were right outside of the castle and then we started making our way back to Epcot.


At around mile 8 is when the heat and humidity started getting to me and my mind was playing games with me and I kept telling myself that I've done this before, no problem, I'm almost there, now I just need get back to Epcot and I'll be good to go. Then I heard the song on the loudspeakers by Alicia Keys "This Girl is on Fire" on repeat, and they had a fire truck and fire fighters out there cheering us on. There was something about that song that just gave me new energy to keep going. Every since then that has been my go to song for my runs and every time it comes on it makes me want to be faster and keep going stronger.

Right before mile 11 hit, it was all uphill and this was tough, at this point I saw Jeff Galoway right in front of me, I was trying to keep pace with him, but man is he fast, his walk-run-walk program works, I'm thinking about trying it out, because I was so exhausted by that time that I could not keep up with him. Granted his is an Olympic Gold Medalist, but I thought I had an age advantage which apparently ment nothing :) Finally I saw the Epcot ball and I knew I was almost at the finish line. I heard them announce that Sean Astin finished and I told myself to just finish it and then its all over with. It felt so good to finally cross the finish line, I could not even remember if there were characters at the finish line, I just wanted to finish.

This was by far the hardest race that I've ran, I think the heat and humidity had everything to do with it. The course and the characters where amazing, but when you are coming from a cold rainy Seattle winter to a hot humid Orlando winter, it makes a huge difference in how you perform.

I had my Tinkerbell Half Marathon medal in my running fanny pack during the run, so when I finished I put it on with my Princess Half Marathon medal and then I went on to finally get my Coast-to-Coast medal. When they were cutting off my wrist band, I asked them if I could keep it to put in my scrapbook, they wouldn't let me, so I asked it I can at least just keep the part where it says Coast-to-Coast challenge and they cut it out for me and let me keep it!!! RunDisney is the best, they really do an amazing job putting these events together. I'm hoping to do a lot more of them in the future. They are far for me and expensive as well, but a girl can hope, right?

If you were there, let me know what you thoughts were about the race below!!!

Keili