Tuesday, July 27, 2010

so far behind!

Looks like I will be skipping over the Green River Marathon review and condensing a few others.

Way back in June I ran the Lake Youngs Ultra. This is a great race for a number of reasons. First, the course is beautiful. Second, the terrain is ideal, gently rolling hills to keep your body limber. Third, a great crew of people show up to run it. Fourth, they have prizes for EVERYONE! Fifth, Eat, Drink, Run Woman makes a killer post race BBQ!
So I loved it. My body loves trail runs and hills. Not a BQ so my mother ran with me and we took turns pushing each other. A great way to run a race. I have so much fun running with my mother and she always seems to feel strong when I feel weak. I start falling back and she starts pushing ahead.


Next up, The Ghost Of Seafair. Another King Arthur race. Held the same weekend as Rock and Roll Seattle, this course follows the original Seafair Marathon course through Bellevue. It quickly became apparent why this course was ditched after the first year, IT WAS HARD! Lots of big, steep hills. But we did get a great tour of Bellevue. I ended up running in a group of 6 people and really enjoyed myself. I like the intimacy of a race this size. I had briefly considered running RnR but just couldn't imagine running with 27,000 people. Our race had 17 people.
I hardly ran for a week afterwards. Too much pounding on my joints took a beating on all that pavement.

An ENTIRE month later...
I ran the Light at the end of the Tunnel Marathon...although the tunnel is closed currently, so there was no tunnel portion. Instead of a steady downhill for 26.2 miles, we ran 13.1 miles up a "barely noticeable" incline and then down again. I was surprised to discover that the uphill section was rather manageable. I started out slow and sore, but settled into a comfortable 'mile-munching' pace.
As we climbed my mother stopped speaking to me, to any questions I asked she would grunt/groan in reply. After she recovered her breath on the way down she confessed that she was having trouble keeping up with me and for a bit even thought she might throw-up. ANOTHER FIRST!!! With the exception of LYU mumsie has been slowing her pace down to stay with me.
Sadly on the downhill I was holding us back. Two steps into our descent my knee started speaking up. It seems my IT Band had tightened up a bit and this downhill was more than it wanted. After a few miles, as the joint kept getting stiffer, I decided to take some Ib preufen and was thrilled to feel the pain back off. I couldn't pick up the pace though. I was hitting some 10:25 minute miles on the way up the hill...13.1 at 2 hours 32 minutes, I was prepared to beat my best time. Even though I didn't make it, I did get a new second best time.
But the BEST part was that the buffet started at the finish line. Cross line, turn right and grab food. Obviously professional race directors (which more than made up for him showing up 20 minutes late).

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