This was a rough one for me. I'm still trying to figure out exactly why. I think there are a number of reasons. But the race was a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it. The bands were cool and the scenery can't be beat. It was a great experience.
Excuse #1 would have to be the night before. I did a little more walking around in the city than I would have preferred, but the killer was that I didn't get a wink of sleep Friday night. Of course, I never sleep much the night before a marathon, but I can usually nod off for a couple of hours. Not this time.
So I got up at 4:30 and walked to the Weston and caught the bus to Tukwilla. Just relaxed before the race. Ate a Powerbar and a banana, unloaded and waited for it to start.
I was pretty amazed at the mass of humanity at the starting line. They started the full and half together, so all 25,000 people were there. The way they started with corrals and waves worked out well (for me, at least). Even with all those people, it never felt very crowded during the race.
The first half of the race went really well (they always do). I stopped to pee near the end of the first mile. Probably just nerves, but that was the only pit-stop I needed. The first 6 miles go through neighborhoods with a steady hill for about a mile from 4 to 5. Then it takes a sharp downhill and runs along the shore of Lake Washington, pretty flat until the first marathon/half split just after mile 9. We went up a steep hill and, while the half marathon turned left into the I-90 tunnel, the full turned right on to the Lake Washington Bridge. Usually a bridge goes up and over, but this was a floating bridge so it started with a downhill and went up on the other side where we turned around and did it again. A turn around is always nice to be able to look back and realize that you aren't in last place after all.
After the bridge we went into the tunnel and things got really, really weird. We're in a tunnel, it's dark, you can't see the end, and about half way through this really strange sound starts getting louder and louder. They had put a metal band in the tunnel. With the echo, you can hardly recognize the music but it was loud and with the runners yelling and the tunnel being dark it was a really wild experience.
But anyway, after the tunnel, we rejoined the half marathoners and continued a couple more miles on the freeway HOV lanes, which brings me to Excuse #2. A lot of the race was on concrete freeway HOV lanes or on the Alaskan Highway viaduct. Asphalt would have been softer, but I'm not sure it made that much of a difference. I'm still feeling good at this point.
Just before marathon mile 15 we split once again and the half marathoners happily ran down into the stadium to celebrate and the rest of us continued along the viaduct parallel to the waterfront and then through the Battery Street tunnel.
After the tunnel, we started a pretty steady incline from mile 16 to 20 and I think that's what killed me (Excuse #3). By the time I got to the turn-around, the downhill didn't even feel like a relief. I was pretty spent. Back in the tunnel I started feeling really sick. I hung near the side of the road ready to pull over and start hurling Gu and Cytomax all over the sidewalk, but that never happened.
I saw my wife at mile 22. I was back on the viaduct and she was at the little park next to Pikes Place Market watching the race go by below. After that I felt better for a couple of miles, but I couldn't get my speed up. I had slowed down to close to a 10-minute mile pace and it was becoming evident that a sub 4-hour finish wasn't going to happen.
The rest was just a bunch of running -- slowly. It went downhill off the viaduct, then turned around and came back up and then and down into the stadium parking lot and the finish line.
After I crossed the line, I kind of staggered around a bit thinking that I might pass out. But I didn't do that either. I stayed in the finisher area for a while trying to get myself together. I felt worse at the end of this race than I have at any of the others. I found myself talking to another guy who had a rough go of it too. When I saw the big bloody spot on the right side of his chest, I realized that it indeed could be worse.
So there it is. I didn't break 4-hours (again), but I'm ok with that. I could come up with a bunch more excuses, but the bottom line is that 4:09:12 was all I had in met that day. I ran when I wanted to walk. I kept moving when my body kept telling me to stop. And I had a really fun time doing it (except for those parts that really sucked).
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