Seattle Rock'N'Roll Half Marathon 2013! Completion of the Pacific Peaks Challenge.

Yesterday I finished the Seattle Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon. It was so much fun. The weather ended up being great, only sunny day that we are going to have for a while. Now that being said, I think I would have preferred it to be a bit cloudy, there was hardly any shade, so it made it for a very hot race. Nevertheless, I had a great time and the course ended up being much better than last year.

I woke up at 5:00AM to get ready and leave, I live only about a 20 minute drive from Seattle, but I do like to be at races early, just to give myself enough time to find parking and to make sure that I got there before they closed the streets. The race stared at 7:00AM and I was placed in corral 23, out of 41 I think, not too bad, but that still meant that I didn't start running until about 7:30AM.

I got to Seattle right about 6:00AM, there was no traffic and I got a great parking spot. Once I paid for parking and got my stuff ready (I did gear check a bag so I can have a sweatshirt after the race). I made my way to the Space Needle, there were already so many people there that I had to shove thru the crowds to make it to gear check. I had a banana, some water and a bite of a bagel and then headed to my corral. I did notice a little bit of a change from last year, they had pushed back the starting line a bit.

Finally it was our turn and off we went, I started my watch and my phone ( I use the Map My Run app. which sucks by the way, I don't even know why I use it, its never accurate) and started running. I had gotten a pace bracelet from the Expo with a finish time of 2:15. I knew this was going to be a stretch since I have been trying to give my body as much rest as possible so training runs have been very few and far apart. I had kept the pace up until mile 6, that's where I fell behind a little. I felt pretty good through out the race, it was really hot and sunny the whole time, which I think worked against me. I was really worried about my knee that had been hurting me really bad during the Portland race, this time I didn't feel anything up until mile 7.5, but it wasn't nearly as bad, no tears this time :). I finished with an official chip time of 2:28:53. I was a little bit disappointed in myself since I was doing so good up until the second half of the race, but of well, maybe I should train next time, huh?

Overall I loved this race, I'm glad I did again and I'll probably do it again next year. I definitely prefer the Seattle race to the Portland one, although I was disappointed that they didn't have foil blankets at the finish line, I'm glad I packed a sweatshirt, I get super cold after running. At the end they had the usual: water, chocolate milk, Gatorade, bananas, Jamba Juice smoothies, granola bars and chips. Once I left the finish line area, I went to a medical tent to have both my knees wrapped with ice (this really helped me after Portland). I caught the last three songs by the headliner band Hot Chelle Rae. They were actually really good, I might look into getting their CD. Since I was by myself, I didn't really stick around for too long. Next I headed to the beer garden, I wasn't going to miss out on a free beer. This was also set up much better than in Portland, the lines there were so long that I didn't even wait, in Seattle I walked right up and got mine. Once I was done I headed to the UPS gear check and picked up my bag and headed home. But before I left I did have to stop by the Dahlia Bakery and pick up some goodies for the road and some for us to share at home.

The course was pretty much the same, there were some changes for the better, which I was super excited to see. The first and the biggest one was that the huge hill at mile 5.5 was no longer there :) If you ran it last year, you know what I'm talking about. The second change was the freeway onramp loop that went up to the stadiums was gone as well. I'm sure there were some other changes as well, but these were ones that I noticed.

I'm now at race 6 of 13 for the year, every one gets me closer to finishing my personal challenge for the year. Keep up with my races right here every month.

Hope to see you there next year and next month look for the blog post for See Jane Run race!

Keili

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