13.1 (It's the .1 that Gets You)

There is a virtual tour of the route for the Seattle Marathon on the official web page for the race. It shows Seattle Center and the Experience Music Project "building", a wide open and sunny 5th Avenue, beautiful images of fall foliage along Lake Washington and in the Arboretum...What they don't show you is the blinding rain, gusty wind, and nasty old dudes puking on the sidewalk in front of you.

I ran the Seattle Half Marathon on Sunday. 13.1 miles of pure weather. You know what sucks? Rain. You know what else sucks? Cold. In my book there is nothing worse than 33 degrees and raining. Either snow or rain. Or be dry. But almost cold enough to snow? Sucks.

Mrs. Math Dude and and I drove to Seattle for the 7:30 start, arrived at 7:29:58, and started the race without so much as a little stretch or a trip to the porta-john. And even then it was only a little miracle of a parking spot JUST big enough for the A3 next to the EMP that let us get there on time. Nice way to start. And here's the thing about an early morning start in Seattle in the winter. It's dark. I mean, we could see and everything, but the headlights would have still been on in the car.

The course (Map Here) goes south through downtown on 5th (2.5 miles or so), onto I-90 and east through the Mount Baker Tunnel (the first climb), north along the shore of Lake Washington, back west up Galer and Madison Streets (brutal climb up Galer) and then through the Arboretum back to downtown. The finish is 3/4 mile of pretty painful climbing, especially if you are trying to kick at all. The finish in Memorial Stadium is great (running on the padded astroturf is very welcome after 13 miles of pounding pavement). It rained off and on but was never too bad while I was on the course. In fact, the little rain that there was kept my temperature about right for most of the race.

My goal pace for this one was 8:45 per mile, hoping that I could maybe run 8:30s. I didn't know the course and had no idea how much the hills would slow me down. Thanks to a little miracle called the Garmin Forerunner and MotionBased, here are my splits for the course:

1. 8:20
2. 7:46
3. 7:40
4. 8:00
5. 7:50
6. 7:50
7. 8:08
8. 8:17
9. 7:34
10. 7:33
11. 7:33
12. 7:35
13. 7:12

I had set out thinking I would try to run 8:30 for the first 9 miles and then see what I had left for the last 4. Race pace always surprises me, and I am mostly just glad that I didn't burn out on the hills. Overall I ran at 7:58 or so by my chip time, 7:43 by my GPS pace. Either way, sub 8:00 makes me happy. Official time: 1:44:33.

Mrs Math Dude ran a very nice 1:54 and RPD ran at his goal: 1:59:40.

Next up, the Vancouver Marathon Marathon on May 6th. Yikes.