I'm an Official Half Marathoner!

I’m pretty happy with my Seattle Rock ‘n Roll Marathon. I did not decide to run the race until Friday morning because I had thought the race was some future date in July. That shows how little I was paying attention to the upcoming events. But what I was doing was training, so I was actually fully prepared for the run on Saturday.

In my previous blog I had completed my first ever half marathon distance training run last Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I did not run because I was in a recovery mode. Thursday would normally have been a mid distance run but I was intent on a job interview Friday and some other interruptions so that I never got out to run. This turned out to be quite fortunate because on Friday when I realized the run was Saturday and not a future date I was fully rested. So, on Friday morning after my interview I signed up for the race. Friday was a beautiful Seattle morning with blue skies and I was in a good mood because my interview went well and I felt all I needed was a little loosening up jog in the afternoon.

Sometimes the body and mind play tricks. In the afternoon the clouds rolled in fast, dark, and thick, which has a way of dampening even a good mood. Then as I prepared to take the dogs out for my loosening up run I found my knees exceedingly tight. I could only run a couple hundred yards so I alternated walking and then running again. I completed my two loops which is about 1.6 miles feeling frustrated and a bit nervous about Saturday’s run. It would be a disaster if I felt this way for the Rock ‘n Roll Half, especially since I paid $150 to sign up for it. We went out to Edmonds Arts Fair in the evening and my legs were heavy and tired and my doubts lingered.

Saturday morning we were up at 5:00. Karen had to work but was a sport and fought the Mercer Mess traffic to get me close to the start and then she went into work. As usual, I needed to pee before the run. As I was entering a massive line for a row of porta potties a guy came by and told those who listened about a restroom that had no lines near Key Arena, just a couple hundred feet away. I noticed as I jogged over there that my legs felt pretty good. I had taken ibuprofen at 5:30. He was right, I walked right in to open stalls and urinals. As I headed back to find my starting corral I was obliged to mention the same to a few who would listen.

The start was well organized with 36 corrals setup starting with Corral 1 at the start line and then continuing back to Corral 36 which strung out about 4 blocks. The corrals were based on your projected completion time. I put my projection in as 1:56, even though I knew two hours was more realistic. This put me into Corral 8. I knew it was the right pace for me.

They released corrals every two minutes so we kind of shuffled up to the start line as they counted down for each group in front of us. It was nice because when they counted down our group we were able to just start running since the previous group was already well out of the start area. I got Runkeeper started a couple seconds late but my music wasn’t playing. I was having problems with my fingers registering on my phone so I was casually running getting my music going and was amazed that I was not even thinking much about the effort as I tracked along with the group. The music was now going and I looked up and noticed pacers in bright green shirts holding up a narrow sign that said 3:50. Awesome!

The 3:50 pacers were from the Green Lake Running Club and their job was to keep a consistent pace for those who intended to complete the marathon at about three hours and 50 minutes. That translated well to my goal pace of about 1:56 for the half marathon. So I comfortably settled in behind them. I completed the first 5K at 26:51 and the 10K at 53:53 for an 8:41 pace. I reached 10 miles at 1:27:53 for an 8:48 pace. These are my official result times posted for bib 8430. But I was slightly in distress because the pacers turned off with the marathon course at about 8.5 miles. Around 10.5 miles we went up a ramp to get into the Mount Baker I-90 tunnel heading back towards the finish line at Century Link Field. The tunnel had an uphill pitch to it and as we hit 11 miles I was feeling drained. Also as I exited the tunnel I noticed Runkeeper had lost itself as it did not know how to handle the loss of GPS signal. It now was overstating distance and told me my current split was under 4 minutes. That’s nonsense, but at least it was still accurately keeping time.

Since the pacers had turned off I was pacing myself with a woman I could tell was more experienced than me who had also been in the pack following the pacers. But as we went through the tunnel she was slightly pulling away from me. I was beyond able to keep up with her but I kept her in my sights so I could judge how far I was falling back. She was clearly holding about an 8:45 pace and my pace was creeping over 9:00 minutes per mile. As we rounded the corner around Fourth Avenue I was actually passed by a few people. That had happened rarely so I knew I was continuing to lose pace so I dug deep and stayed with those folks. But then when I thought we were going to stay at street level there was an on ramp up to Edgar Martinez Way. That killed me. So I bared down and did my best.

In the end my final official time was 1:56:49 for an 8:55 pace. Pretty good. I’m pleased that my first ever official half marathon was under two hours. I finished in the top 16.2%. Not bad for an over 50 dude who has never been in shape for distance running.

Hitting the finish line