I ran this back in November, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Like Portland, This was a test race on my path to the Rock 'N' Roll Arizona Marathon in less than two weeks.
The race starts in front of EMP; I arrived at the starting line just 2 minutes before the race start. We got stuck in traffic and I had to abandon my wife and daughter and jog to the start while they parked.
My race plan was simple: start the first mile in the 150s, then mile 2-5 around 170. After mile 5, I’d keep it steady at 180, then mile 10 onward as hard as I could.
I came in with 1:40:40, which is disappointing in light of the 1:34 pace needed to say I was “on track” for a 3:20 in Arizona in January. I’m happy with race execution though – I paced it well although I also didn’t negative split. However, the big downhill at mile 1-2 gave me a fast 6:50 mile there, and then the hills in the back half added a couple minutes.
It’s my first time to run the half on that course, and it’s true what they say – the Seattle half is “all the hard parts” of the Seattle full course.
Here's the Garmin data (what's a race report without data?)
Mile 1-2 has the long downhill to I90 express lanes, mile 7-8 is the big climb on the route with 8-9 the downhill on that and another climb 9-10. I went and looked more closely at mile 9-10 because my time was just too slow for the hill I remember.
It starts with an uphill that’s not too bad, but then gets crowded and twisty with poor pavement. I recall weaving through people and a couple times getting stuck a moment behind a clot of slower runners. The uphill accounts for maybe 20-30 seconds; but otherwise I think next time I’ll make sure to push through more aggressively.
There were a number of people from JFT2 racing both the full and the half. I saw Mark and Shannon in front of EMP - amazingly even with thousands of people, we ended up right next to each other at the start. I saw Blake right after his run, but then had to wait a long time to meet up with Theresa and Lea. Theresa had already found Jill, so we went and found her and I shared my race report.
Everyone on the team did pretty much what they expected without issues. David Treadwell was doing the full for a BQ, and nailed it with a 3:03! He encountered some cramps and had to stop and stretch a few times, otherwise he was on a sub-3 pace. That’s pretty impressive and something to aim toward myself.
The picture to the left is about 90 minutes after race end. Theresa has her big puffy blue cold weather coat, and you see me in my red hat with the sides turned up. Quite Christmas-y, don't you think? And Coach Jill and Jill Brandon. Jill B also had a good run.
Nice race with a solid performance - well done!
Good luck on your 2008 tri goals as well, they look very good.
Posted by: rainmaker | Wednesday, January 02, 2008 at 07:06 PM