RnR Seattle Half Review Part 1

June 26th - Seattle RnR Half Marathon

First of all, I just have to say that the weather was PERFECT! Nice and cool and overcast and I felt like I could run for days. As I may have mentioned previously, I wilt in the hot weather, but give me a cool and even drizzling day, and I am a rock star!

Okay, so back to the race.

Logistics: I was pleased to find there is a FREE light rail that runs from the expo / finish village back to most of the major downtown areas (like hotels), especially since parking will cost you your first born child and there was no real parking for the start or finish areas.

Race support: Not bad. I'm a little picky about my water and I was a little concerned about the source of the water on the course. It tasted 'off'. I had a bad experience at Rock 'n' Roll Phoenix Full marathon in 2009 and ever since then I've started to believe in carrying my own water. However the stations were well stocked - even as far as back I was (I crossed the start line about an hour after the start and averaged 12.7 min/mile).

More fun info to come!

What happened to May?

I seem to be completely missing posts from May. Here's why:

I was able to take an extra part time job with Team In Training to promote events all over the Greater Los Angeles Area. It was fantastic. I got to meet some great people and get others excited about the team.

However, working 52 hrs a week left me little time for sleeping, eating, and running, let alone blogging. In fact, several other projects were put on hold while I tried to bring in some extra cash, like our home gym.

This reminds me. We've been using our HoMedics body composition scanner to see how things are going in our weight, muscle, fat, water, and bone percentages. I won't disclose any numbers but I'm happy to say that things are pretty good for not doing being very strict on exercise.

I don't know how accurate it is but I do think that monitoring changes in your body can be a great help to improving your race, not to mention your lifestyle. I'm not the type of person to obsess over how much I weigh or what my body fat % is. But, I find that if I check on it every Saturday morning to see if there has been any ups or downs, I find myself thinking more about what I'm eating during the week compared to how much physical activity I've engaged in a little more.

Runningplanet.com says that every extra pound of non-productive body weight (body fat) decreases your running performance by around 1%.

I will be setting a goal for an optimum weight/fat % for running. Some experimenting may need to take place....

It's JUST a half.

It is now a little over two weeks before the Seattle Half Marathon for which Jason and I registered several months ago but only started training for 5 days ago.

We have ran 13.1 miles several times before and it seems that our cavalier attitude has caused us to procrastinate like never before. Three weeks before the event we ran our first 6 miler, cold. Can't even remember the last time we went for even a light jog before that.

Our plan is to run 8 miles 2 weeks before the event and then 10 miles 1 week before the event and hopefully our 2 years of marathon experience will kick in and somehow awaken the spirit of endurance buried within our bodies to help us finish the half marathon without injury or excessive walking.

So last night, we went out for a 30 min. run to continue to encourage our muscles and lungs to kick it in to gear. This morning I woke up with a sore lower back.

Don't forget to stretch after you run.