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

Lululemon SeaWheeze Half Marathon, class of 2013!

Enough of the pre-race day talk and lets get right into RACE DAY! Have I talked enough about how much I love this half marathon, oh yeah, I did!

Anyway, I had set my usual three alarms on my phone and this time since I was staying at the hotel by myself, I requested an additional wake up call just in case. The race started at 7:00 and since I had to check out of my hotel literally minutes after I got back, I had all my stuff ready to go the night before, that way I could just get back, take a quick shower and check out.

I decided to wear the cool racerback tank that I had bought the day before to the race and my crops, I'm not a fan of running in shorts, they always ride up on me and that makes it for a very uncomfortable and chafing guaranteed race. If you are runner, you know what I mean, right? I made sure I had my Chip chip on my shoe (Chip is the founder of Lululemon and they put his face on the chip you put on your shoe, its a play of his name), my wrist band on tight and off I went. Like I said before, it was about a half an hour walk to the Vancouver Conventions center, which was the start of the race from my hotel, so I made sure I had plenty of time. I saw a ton of people who were racing walking towards the starting line.

Once I got there, they didn't really have much to do. Unlike other races where they have refreshments and food before the race, they don't at SeaWheeze. I could see that they were setting up for the finish line festival already and there was a table with bananas that I'm sure I could have went and asked for one, but I thought that might have been a little awkward. The cool thing about the SeaWheeze is that they actually have bananas and oranges throughout the course. Having run that race the year before I knew they had that and I wasn't worried about not having eaten anything that morning. I don't like to eat anything but a banana race morning anyway, so I was going to be fine.

They did a little warm up routine at 6:40, before the race started, that's always so much fun, they have a few different people doing stretches, warm up and yoga. I even made it to their video they posted on their website SeaWheeze.com. The race started a little bit late, I think because they changed the way you get to the starting line and the racers who had been there the year before were all trying to get in one way and they were trying to re-direct people and it was a bit confusing.

I have to be honest, this the most beautiful course I've ever ran, most of it is on the water and Vancouver is an amazing city. The support is great through out the race, they have set up huge cheer stations and this year the water stations were well managed with each station having Vega electrolytes drink and Vega energy gels. The gels were amazing, I even scored some extras to take with me, hopefully I can find some in the States. On the course they had tons of people dressed up in costumes and they had a little drag show going on and each mile marker had a very cute quote or a thought on it.

Its the finish line that had all of the excitement going on. The cool thing is that Lululemon always has some surprises, they don't release a picture of their medal and this year it was completely different from last years medal. I actually ended up breaking my first medal and I had to go back and ask for another one, I told them that I worked so hard for this and they gave me another one, they had a whole bucket full of broken ones, they were kind of fragile. The medal was made out of wood and carved with the SeaWheeze 2013 logo. it opened up and on the inside it said "sweat once a day" and on the other side you could put a picture in it. They did a great job with it, after receiving my medal, there was another section set up with Saje, who gave out little clip pouches filled with two little roll on bottles of natural medicine for pains and aches and another for headaches. Next they had volunteers handing out wet towels, these were real towels, wet and wrapped in plastic, also I've never seen at a race before, but it was so nice and refreshing to be able clean my face and hands after a long race. Finally as you were leaving the finish line area Scull Candy was in the house!!! They were handing out a pair of headphones with a case that had the SeaWheeze logo on it.

They had a huge runners brunch set up for all the runners, the line was so long though and I had to head back to my hotel so I could check out in time. My hotel would not let me do a late check out since they were fully booked. I was really bummed that for the second year in a row I didn't have time to enjoy that. I headed back to the hotel, I even had a guy ask me about my medal and what was happening in the city. On my way I picked up my last Blendz milk chocolate hot chocolate (the best hot chocolate you will ever have, I promise!), some pastries from Starbucks and I was good to go. I literally had enough time to take a five minute shower and gather my belongings and I walked out of my hotel room at 10:59AM, the check out time was 11:00PM.

I made a quick pit stop at my favorite book store in Granville called Chapters, I picked up a few things and headed home. The border line was crazy long this time, I don't know why since it was a Saturday afternoon, who knows??? I probably waited for about an hour or so and once I was across the border I was clear to go all the way home. I ended up getting home around 4:00PM after making a few stops on the way.

Overall this was an amazing experience, this will be my annual race that I hopefully will never miss. I love, love, love Vancouver, love, love, love Lululemon and love, love, love SeaWheeze.

                                                         Photo from SeaWheeze.com
Hope to see you there next year!

Keili

Lululemon SeaWheeze Half Marathon 2013 Pre-Race Day!

I have officially completed 8 of my scheduled 13 half marathons so far for this year!

If you have not heard of SeaWheeze or Lululemon, you are probably not Canadian or from the PNW. Maybe I'll just start out by explaining what Luluemon is first. Basically its an athletic wear company that mainly focuses on running and yoga clothing and accessories. Luluemon has a huge following and needless to say, I'm definitely one of those people. I just absolutely love their running clothing and their bags, that is what I mainly shop there for. In 2012 they launched a half marathon of their very own. As soon as I found out about it I had to register, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to run an inaugural run (I think so anyway, we'll see I guess for sure). Since the company was founded and has its headquarters in Vancouver BC, it was a no brainer and I had to make this happen.

SeaWheeze is not like any other run that I have ran. It is very unique and besides the runDisney races, my favorite. I hope to be running this race every year as long as they are willing to keep it going. For those of you who know, Lululemon clothing is addicting and because they discontinue items and release new items so frequently that they almost become collectors items. The cool thing about the SeaWheeze is that they make very special merchandise just for the two day before and after "party".

I live in Seattle, last year my husband and my son came with me, its a nice getaway for us, however this year my husband had sent his passport away to get a visa and didn't even think that he would need it to get across the border. So literally the day before we were supposed to leave he realizes that he doesn't have a passport or an enhanced license so he could not come with me. Well, I wasn't going to let that stop me from going that's for sure. I was really nervous, mainly because I rely on my phone for directions everywhere and we cannot use our phones in Canada, the roaming charges are just a bit too much. I had printed out the directions to the Convention Center and the hotel I was staying and hoped for the best. The cool thing is that if you start a map on the iPhone you don't need to be live to get the rest of the directions, so I just set my final destination and turned my phone on the airplane mode and was ready to go.

I left our house around 6:30AM, I wanted to get there early to make sure there was still merchandise left in the SeaWheeze store. I took me about an hour and a half to get to the border and the wait was about 15-20 minutes. Once I got across it was smooth sailing, the only thing is I always forget how far Vancouver actually is from the border. I got to my final destination (The Convention Center) by about 9:30 or so. As I was driving up and looking for a place to park, I saw this huge line going all the way around the convention center, it was crazy! I parked right there, I don't know the city too well, so I didn't want to take a chance of getting lost. I waited in line for about an hour and a half. I had a very sweet family right in front of me and we talked for a while, that make the wait a whole lot better. They had come all they way from New Jersey for this run, so I told them a little bit about the race from last year and kind of what to expect.

Once we got inside I showed my ID and got my race bag. This was waaaaaaay cooler this year, first of all it was canvas with the  2013 SeaWheeze logo all over and it had an awesome rope drawstring to make it a backpack and on the other side it had a brown leather SeaWheeze logo patch on it. Attached to it was a little wooden luggage tag that you could write your name and number on, incase it got lost. Inside wasn't much this year, there was your timing chip, your running wrist band with you number on it (which they put around your wrist right there) and a post card with the map to the Sunset festival. After waiting in line forever to pick up  your packet then I got to wait in the next line to go into the store, but this is why I had come so early so I can make sure I don't miss out on any of the limited edition merchandise. I waited in line probably for another 20 minutes, they had this company called Saje natural Wellness (www.saje.ca) who were spraying this refreshing spray in your face and it felt good after having waited so long outside in such hot weather.

Once I got inside the store I was in Lululemon heaven. They had green yoga mats (wasn't impressed), two gym bags, one was really cool blue and silver color and the other was black with a bright colored interior. I had originally made up my mind that I was going to get a bag, but once I saw the style and the color, I wasn't too impressed with them. They had ton of the swiftly tech shirts (tanks, tees and long sleeves), just special SeaWheeze colors, I would have loved to have gotten the dark blue ones, but they were already sold out of those in all the styles and sizes, its crazy. Then they had some long pants, with stripes on the sides and three styles of crops that I saw, the only ones I really liked were a running pair in black with cute stripes on the bottom, but I missed out on them, I just took too long to think about them and they were all gone by the time I went to get them :( There were a couple of jackets and tank tops, again nothing that would make me want to buy them. Two styles of scuba hoodies were up for sale, in yellow with a green embroidered mermaid on the side and a bold striped one. Ton of socks and head bands and a poster with yoga mat straps. I ended up buying two things, the yellow scuba and a tank with the mermaid in the front (also the back bottom corner said VanSweaty-too cute, right).

After I was done, I went outside, they had strawberry and mango ice pops as many as you want for free. All of this was for free by the way, they had a hair braiding station, the line was the shortest so that's what I decided to do. Then there was a nail painting station, temporary tattoos, free massages for runners only, a photo booth and a play area.

From there I walked to Robson, since I had paid for parking until 6:00, I decided to just walk there and hang out on Robson and have some lunch. Since I was by myself I didn't want to go to a restaurant or anything, so I stopped by Whole Foods, they had free WiFi, so I grabbed some lunch and chatted with my husband and son and headed back to the Convention center to get my car and drive to the hotel. I took a nice nap and set the alarm to wake up at 7:30 so I would have enough time to walk back to the Convention Center for my volunteer shift.

I had picked up my volunteer package (t-shirt, badge and a wrist band) earlier with my runners package, so I was ready to go. I got there a bit early and I waited in the volunteer lounge, unfortunately all the food was already gone and I had not eaten dinner, this was going to be a long night before my race. The shift was from 8:30PM to 11:00PM and I had a half hour walk back to my hotel. The shift I signed up for was to convert the package pick-up area to the bag check area. The previous shifts had already completed so much, that really all we had to do is move the tables over for bag check and that's it. There were 6 of us and we got that done pretty fast and the rest of the time we just waited around, they really didn't plan very well to utilize us. All but one of us were running the next morning, so they let us go at 10:45PM. I walked back to the hotel and set everything up for the race and set up a wake up call and three alarms on my phone and went to bed.

To be continued....

Check out my next post about RACE DAY!!!

Keili

See Jane Run Half Marathon 2013!

 

 I'm officially 7 for 13 on my half marathons this year.

This was my first See Jane Run and I really enjoyed it a lot. The course was beautiful, it started and finished in Gas Works Park in Seattle. The weather again was so gorgeous, but not best for running. I'm not complaining though, we'll take the sunshine here in Seattle any day!

The expo was at the W Hotel in downtown, kind of a hassle to get to and I had to pay for parking. The setup was really small, they were selling their merchandise and a few tables with energy bar tastings and that's about it, nothing too big. The Seattle Marathon was set up with a table right outside the conference room and they had some cute giveaways that my son enjoyed, like noise makers and pom poms. In the goodie bag they had the bib and some energy drinks and tattoos. We did end up riding the monorail afterwards, I had paid for an hour parking spot, so I figured, we might as well enjoy a little time in Seattle.

 

 So the run started at 8:00 and I knew that the parking situation was going to be a nightmare at Gas Works, so I was planning on being there at least an hour before hand. I got there just as I had planned and didn't really have as hard of a time finding a parking spot as I had thought, I had to walk maybe five minutes to the starting line.

 

They were setting up for the finish line festival with food and drinks, now I don't like to eat
anything but a banana before my races, so I asked if it was okay to have one before the race and they were totally fine with that. They had tons of Honey buckets and not much of a wait for them which was super nice. I sat by the water and stared at beautiful Seattle until it was time to start. The view from Gasworks park is by far my favorite in Seattle. I could have sat there for hours and just lounged, but that's not why I was there, I had plenty of time to do that after the race.

 

Finally it was time to start, the streets were narrow and we all kind of went the same pace, they did have three start times. I started with the 9-11 minute pacers, I did not finish there though :(. The course was around Lake Union and the weather was just beautiful, so the views that we got were amazing.

 

I went into this race with the mentality of not trying to beat any of my times. I knew that both of my knees were messed up, I'm still not 100% recovered from my tendinitis and I get really bad anxiety during my races. I have anxiety on a daily bases as is, but the races really make it bad, so I was hoping that not worrying about finishing at, or beating a specific time would make it better. It really worked, I didn't take my anxiety totally away, but it was much, much easier to control my breathing and keep going.

 

Needless to say I didn't get a really good time, but I was okay with that, going into it all sorts of injured. I finished strong and thoroughly enjoyed all the champagne at the finish line. This race is also called the chocolate and champagne race. The sponsors are Sees Candy and Barefoot wines, included in the race price is also a champagne glass that you get to keep :) I got a wrist band and once I picked up my glass filled with candy, I headed into the Champagne garden. They were serving two kinds of champagne a sweet red kind and a regular dry champagne. I tried the regular one and it was amazing and it tasted especially great after a long race. I had about three glasses I think, but they did run out of the regular kind and had to go and get more, I would recommend to go there first if you don't want to wait around while they replenish.

After that I headed back to the waterfront and just sat on the lawn and enjoyed the scenery, took some pictures and after a while headed back to my car and came home.

 

Overall I would recommend this race for sure, so far it has been one of my favorites in Seattle, right after the Rock'n'Roll one I think. I would definitely run this one again next year.

Hope to see you there,

Keili

See ya later Pre-K, bring it on Kindergarten!!!

 

Its that time of year again, when all the kids are graduating. This time however our little one is graduating as well. Chase just graduated from Evergreen Academy Montessori School and is now going to summer camps there. He has made lots of new friends and kept in touch with his old friends from when he was a little baby. Next up for him is Kindergarten, I'm so excited for him to go to public school, we'll find out what that's all about. The nice things is that one of his friends from his class is going to the same school, hopefully they'll be in the same class too. I think its always nice to have a familiar face around when you are in a new environment.

The graduation ceremony was so cute, they were all wearing caps and gowns and they walked down the carpet and sang some songs for us. I'm pretty sure that Chase actually didn't sing a word, but nevertheless it was adorable. Their teacher presented them with a certificate and a rose, then they changed the tassel and threw their caps in the air! Seriously the cutest thing you've ever seen. They has some snacks for us and we got to collect all of their school projects they had been working throughout the year and that was it. The school was officially over and our baby had graduated from Pre-K.

He has grown so much in the last year and learned so many new things. I think the biggest change that I've noticed is how well he is doing in reading. He can read three letter words and can sound out a lot of longer ones. He recognizes words in sentences and when we are out and about he will recognize some words randomly in a grocery store or street signs. I'm so proud of him every single day. He never seizes to amaze me. I do believe that he has learned so much from this school, he knows more than I know in some areas, do you know what shape a quatrefoil is? Well I didn't either, but I do now! He has learned organs and bones that I didn't even know where they belong. But my four year old can worn me ahead of time when he is going to kick me in my gallbladder while he practices his karate kicks :) All you Moms to little boys know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Go figure, now I know where that is as well. Its amazing when he knows geography and about continents and planets and plants and seeds and animals and things that I never thought that they would teach a four year old. But they did and he remembered and learned so, so much.

(I just love this series of pictures so much)

 

So what we've figured out is that our son is definitely the class clown and I think he will be his whole life, I'm positive of that. He gets such joy from making others laugh and that includes us. I'm pretty sure he gets his sense of humor from his Daddy and I love that. Who doesn't love a guy who makes your laugh, right? Another thing I love about Chase is that he just loves life, he is a very happy little guy. I love that he gets joy and happiness from the little things like the beach and bath time and stories and the iPad and running barefoot, playing in the dirt, sidewalk chalk and riding his bike super fast down hill. This is just a few things, there are just too many to name.

 

As we are enjoying out beautiful summer here in Seattle, I'm slowly starting to buy school supplies. I just like to be prepared, what can I say. I was amazed how many things they are asking for a Kindergarten class. I think more than anything its a change from what we are used to, he is actually going to carry a backpack to school, how cute is that. I'm so excited for his first day of school that I'm probably going to have his bag packed like a month before school starts.

 

Wishing everybody a great summer, enjoy the sun and spend lots of time with friends and family. Make sure you check out the little video clips below of his graduation!

Keili