The training: Not as much as I would have liked, given that my training has been disrupted for various reasons since the Seattle Marathon (sickness, school, life, etc). But coming off of a few solid weeks of running, including a long run of 1:40 last weekend.
The weekend: Drove over to Spokane on Saturday with Mom - long drive! Checked into the Red Lion on the Spokane River, and then met up with my friend Tim from high school for a quick run on the river trail. I hadn't run with him since high school cross-country, so that was fun. We all had dinner at Geno's in downtown Spokane - apparently it was prom night too! I had a midterm on Monday so I spent the rest of the night studying - fun fun!
The race: Had gone to Bloomsday with the intention of meeting two fellow RW posters (drunningman and Tar), but somehow we got our wires crossed and ended up just missing each other before the race. The Porta Potty lines were SO long that I only had time to eat a piece of leftover french bread, use them, and go catch up to the orange wave, which was already starting.
The first few miles of the race were pretty uneventful, although hillier than I was expecting. It started off cool and overcast, but by the middle miles the sun was out and it was pretty toasty. Around mile 4, I ran by the water stop hoping to find some Gatorade, and was surprised (and annoyed) to find out that all they had was water!
Shortly after mile 4, we ran up Doomsday Hill. You could see it for a ways before you actually started up it, so it was fun watching the crowds of people making their way to the top. It wasn't a bad hill at all (at least not compared to some of the ones over here in Seattle), but it was made frustrating by the fact that people were walking all across the road, so those that were still running had to constantly swerve in and out and hit the brakes to avoid running into people.
Once we got to the top of Doomsday, the miles went by pretty quickly (with the exception of mile 6, which seemed to go on forever!). I'd given up on going fast (what with the crowds and walkers and the lack of Gatorade), but I was still pretty wiped by the time we made the final turn to the finish line. I had forgotten my watch, so had to wait until we got home and the results were posted to get my
Final time: 1:27:03, average 11:40 pace per mile.
Final thoughts: I'm glad I ran it, just to say I ran it. It was fun seeing 45,000 people out and running, and the weather was pretty decent. However, purely from a running perspective, I'm not sure it's worth the 5 hour drive each way if you actually want to RUN and not just have fun - too crowded, too many walkers, it was difficult to get into a rhythm, and no Gatorade. On the whole, though, it was a good weekend, and it was fun to run in a race again!
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