Sammamish River Run 2013!

Race number 11 under my belt!!!

I signed up for this race because one of my friends wanted to do her very first half marathon with me and was looking for something close to her house. So we picked this race, it seemed easy enough, it was just out and back, very flat course.

We were super excited as time got closer to the race. I could not have been happier to run my first half marathon with a friend. I have to be honest, I was a little nervous, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to keep up or not. I've been having a lot of knee problems lately, although I taped both knees with the KT tape, I wasn't sure how well it was going to hold up.

The morning of the race I get a text from K and she is telling me that it is pouring down rain in Snohomish, where the race was starting. I was so glad that she had texted me that because in Kirkland, where I live the weather was perfectly fine. I did grab a rain jacket, because I didn't want to get wet and then cold afterwards. Sure enough, as soon as I started driving north the rain just started pouring and it was still pitch black outside. The race started at 8:30, but they were closing the streets to the pre-paid parking area at around 7:30, so I wanted to make sure that we got there on time. K and I met up at a McDonalds and then I drove us to the starting area, which was at the Rotary Park in Everett. The rain was still coming down hard, we decided to walk to the starting line and just kind of check out the area and see what was going on. Thankfully K had picked up my race packet with hers the day before, so we were all ready to go. There wasn't much going on around there and it was super cold, so we decided to go back to the car and wait until about 15 minutes before the start of the race to go back. It was so nice and toasty in the car and by the time it was time for us to head to the starting line the rain had completely stopped. I have been so lucky that I have not had any races up until this point with any rain. It was still a little cold, but we figured it would get much better once we started running. We took our energy gels and off we went.

The course was very beautiful and peaceful, we ran along a river pretty much the whole time. There were huge farms with lots of land and cows everywhere. It was kind of fun that there were train tracks next to the road we were running on and there was a train passing by and he kept blowing the horn the entire time he passed us. As we got to about mile marker 5 we passed a water station and I totally saw one of the volunteers picking up non crushed cups from the garbage and re-filling them with water!!!!!!!!! Do you believe that, honestly I didn't believe it at first myself, but its the truth. I was telling K about it and she didn't believe me, who would, right, because who would actually do that!

A few miles into the race, K's parents called and said that they were going to meet us at the turn around part of the race and that her Mom was going to run back with us. So at mile 5 is when we got to the turn around and sure enough, there they were, it was awesome to see a familiar face and we were able to give our rain jackets for K's Dad to take with him since it wasn't raining anymore.

As we were running back now and made our way back to that awful water station I told you about earlier, they were ALL OUT OF CUPS! Now she believed me that they were recycling the cups from the garbage. So now they had sports bottles and asked if we wanted to get some water squirted into our mouths, this was seriously the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in all of the races I've done. It's not like it was the first time they had put on this race, you would think that they would have been better prepared. Believe me, we got a survey after the race and we gave them a piece of our minds, that's for sure.

Anyway, enough of me ranting about that, back to the race. We ended up walking a little bit during the last leg of the race, but we finished strong. We came across another water station at mile 10 that didn't have cups, so no more water until the end of the race. K's boyfriend ended up coming and surprising her at the end and we all crossed the finish line together and happily accepted our medals!

After the race, they had warm soup, which was amazing, we tried the baked potato, but they also had a veggie minestrone and lots of bread and water to drink. There was a booth with energy drinks and we all scored awesome beer mugs. We got super cold, super fast, so we didn't hang out for too long.

 

If you are reading, thanks K, for making this a memorable race and hope to do more in the future with you!

Hope to see you at my next race in Bellingham!

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.

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