Running

Boot camp had to do without me on Monday morning (Labor Day).  Instead, I headed out to Woodinville for the Super Jock n Jill half marathon.  It was the first time I ran this particular race.  It was also the first time I ran a half marathon since last years' Seattle half (November 25th).  So,...expectations were low.  The important thing was that I was out with running shoes on at the start of a race.  The weather was perfect.  The course wasn't bad.  My time (2:34:42) wasn't even horrible, considering how little training there was under my belt when the gun fired.

There now just over a month before the next half marathon: the Royal Victorian.

Both times I've run the Capital City Half Marathon (2005, 2007) it has rained. The nice thing about the rain (in both cases) was that it only rained hard enough to provide a bit of cooling.

Melissa kicked me out of bed at 5:00 AM, and we drove from Seattle to Olympia. Parking and getting to the start was no problem. I'm also happy to report that this year's shirt was gray, long-sleeve, technical, and printed with an appealing logo design. Very nice! Worth keeping. I can toss another cotton race shirt.

There was only a moment to stay warm inside a Starbucks before our group was called to the start line. A cannon -- not a pistol or air horn -- signaled that the race was on. The quintessential Western Washington scenery of Puget Sound vistas and Douglas Fir trees lined the race course. The dome of the State Capital Building would appear and disappear in the trees as we made our way around the city. Melissa pulled ahead, and finished a full 15 minutes before me. She was grinning ear-to-ear when I saw her near the finish (where Chuck took the above photo of me) because she knew that they were handing out finisher metals -- something they didn't do in 2005, and something I'm still sore about.

We rewarded ourselves with a breakfast at McMenamin's Spar Cafe.

Who would have guessed that my blog would become so heavily skewed towards physical activities? It's not like I spend an inordinate amount of my time running or cycling. In fact, I should be spending more time in those activities, considering that I have at least one half-marathon (Capital City), a full-marathon (Royal Victorian), a dual century ride (STP), and a 150-mile ride (Waves to Wine) already on the schedule for this year. The goal in all this is to get back to the shape I was in when I ran the 2002 Disney World Marathon.

This past Saturday (March 31, 2007) was spent in Wenatchee with a group of friends (Rachele, Heidi, Lily and Bill) for the seventh annual Wenatchee Valley Duathlon. I drove over to Wenatchee Friday night and stayed in a motel. The rest of the group got up at some ungodly hour to drive over Saturday morning.

The duathlon consisted of a 3-mile run, 17-mile bike, and 3-mile run combination. Each leg of the race started and finished at the Wenatchee Confluence State Park. (I'd reference a URL for the event if I could actually find one.) The group met at the park and got the gear set out in the transition area with plenty of time to spare. Heidi was riding Melissa's road bike since she only has a mountain bike and Melissa is trekking around in South America right now. The spare time gave Heidi a chance to get some practice at the clip-in shoes on Melissa's bike. We took a group photo, and planned our "attack".

This is where I should admit to never having participated in a duathlon before. All of us in the group, however, are avid runners and cyclists. The unknown quantity was combining running and cycling into a single event, especially one that splits the running into two legs. Knowing that the cycling leg would be the longest, I erred on the side of wearing cycling shorts for the duration of the event. That turned out to be a wise decision. It's easy to run in cycling shorts, but not as pleasant to ride in running shorts.

The race started promptly at 10:00 AM with the out-and-back 3-mile run leg. The weather was perfect, if windy. I've learned that it takes me between four and six miles to hit a good stride, so I was a bit worried about only running three miles before having to transition to a different activity (cycling). I'm convinced that there's some science behind this "warm-up" period. Arteries and veins must need to expand so that blood can pass through the body at the accelerated rate necessary for an elevated activity level. Working up to that point definitely isn't the fun part of an event. We all put in a pretty good showing during the first leg nonetheless. Heidi got into the transition area right in front of me and made an incredibly fast transition into her cycling gear. She was off like a bolt of lightening.

In my attempt to catch up with Heidi at the beginning of the cycling leg, I thought I saw her make a wrong turn. The route signage indicated a right-hand turn immediately following an intersection in a neighborhood. Rather than turn at the intersection -- believing that a sign should be posted prior to the intersection if they intended a turn -- I continued straight. Within a hundred feet, around a corner, a pair of event staff directed participants to make a right-hand turn. Inquiring as to whether they had just seen someone pass on a red bike, they responded in the affirmative. I was never able to catch up to Heidi, and never saw anyone from our group on the rest of the cycling leg.

The cycling leg took an hour and sixteen minutes to complete. I looked around for bikes from our group, and wasn't able to identify any. At a minimum, I knew that Heidi and Rachele hadn't made it back yet. Bill and Lily's bikes were too unfamiliar for me to pick them out of a lineup. My Garmin Forerunner 305 recorded the length of the cycling leg at only 16 miles -- not the expected 17 miles. Since the Forerunner is typically hyper-accurate, I began to wonder if I'd missed part of the route. What if Heidi hadn't made a wrong turn, and I had? What if I missed another part of the route? It's not like the route was well marked. The doubt really sucked. I threw on my running shoes and headed out for the final 3-mile run. I passed Lilly on her return at about three quarters of a mile into my run, and felt better about the chances that I hadn't missed part of the cycling leg. My thoughts were now able to focus on finishing the race.

At exactly 22 miles (3 + 16 + 3) I crossed the finish line. My overall time was 2:16:06. Lily beat me by more than 15 minutes, and the rest of the group were behind me by ~10 minutes. We all agreed that we needed to train more, but still had a good time. Another duathlon is definitely in our future.

Training in a city can present challenges once you get to the half-marathon and marathon distances. No one likes to have to stop every other block for a crosswalk light, or contend with dangerously uneven concrete or asphalt surfaces when focusing on the completion of a 10 to 20 mile run. On the other hand, all the half- and full-marathons I've ever run were in urban environments (which implies that you should be training for that sort of terrain). If you're looking for a good ten-mile route in Seattle, try the route shown in the following map. A group of us from Chuckit ran it this past Saturday, before the downpour started.

If you're a runner visiting Paris, consider running classic parts of the city. Paris is very "runner friendly". You'll likely see people on the wide sidewalks jaunting past you when you walk the city. Melissa and I took the opportunity and ran from our hotel, down the Champs-Elysees to the Louvre and (the other direction) to the Eiffel Tower. Route maps were captured with my Garmin Forerunner 305:

Champs-Elysees to Louvre	Champs-Elysees to Eiffel

It was a very memorable experience that I'm happy to have had. We might even start to make a tradition of visiting and running in world-renowned cities.

Ten of us (Melissa, Rachele, Leslie, Dan, Bethany, Dan, Roger, Schelley, Patrick, and me) got together this year to run the 23rd Annual Henry Weinhard's St. Patrick's Day Dash in downtown Seattle. The race starts at the Seattle Center every year, runs down the failing Viaduct, and finishes at Safeco Stadium in Seattle's SoDo. Despite the poor weather, more than 15,000 runners come out for the slightly longer than 5K run. That's a record number of participants, exceeding last year's number by almost 3,000. We finished the race and made a rainy dash to Kells Irish Pub for some mid-morning breakfast. The route map was recorded with my Garmin Forerunner 305.