Rock ‘N’ Roll Half Marathon

The Thursday after arriving in Seattle, my sister and I ventured into the city to find the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon health and fitness expo. A monorail and taxi ride later, we made it, and it was epic. There were SO many vendors giving away free stuff (you can see my race swag roundup in that bottom pic). I didn’t realize just how humongous this race was actually going to be. Brooks shoes had some really cool circus-esque booths where you could win all kinds of gear including brand new shoes. We didn’t win any shoes, unfortunately, but we did both get cool Brooks t-shirts.

This is where I got my race bib, watched a fast-forward video of the course and got super extra stoked about the race.

Saturday morning I woke up at 5 am because I could barely sleep anyway, got dressed in my new running gear (the idea of running in shorts in rainy 50-degree-weather wasn’t sitting too well with me) and chowed down on bananas and that gross GU stuff at the encouragement of my sister. While hanging out in corral 17 (of who knows how many, there were like 26,000 people there!) at the Seattle Center, I chugged a big ole bottle of water and was too excited to use the port-o-potty.. Naturally this caught up with me around mile 3 where I struggled to remove and replace stretchy, sweaty pants. There was plenty of classic rock blasting at the starting line and a different band at every mile jamming out while we panted past, sometimes mustering the strength to give them a ‘WOO HOO!’ I especially liked the supporters with hilarious signs like “This is the worst parade I’ve ever been to” and Ryan Gosling saying “Hey girl, I’m waiting for you at the finish line.” Then there were the adorable dance teams with tons of girls made up like Kiss band members (each of which I high-fived, by the way).

Then I came to the first hill. And when I say hill, I mean mountain. It was a 3-tiered mountain of pain. I think this was around mile six or seven, and it was so flippin’ steep that I was averaging a 12-minute mile on the way down because we were all scared we were going to tumble down Jack-and-Jill-style. We made it through, however, and I thought ‘oh well, it can’t get any worse than that, right?’
But then I got to mile 13. Yes, the last mile of the half marathon and the last .30 was straight uphill. It wasn’t as steep as the mountain of pain, but after running for 12 plus miles, it felt like I was running in slow motion. It was a pretty cruel design on the part of the race planners, but finally it was over. According to my Garmin watch I finished in 2:05, which I was happy with considering all the crazy-like hills and because I finished the Disney Wine & Dine last October in 2:08.
After the race, I chowed down on some Chinese food, chugged Gatorade, got my free beer and rocked out like a champ in the front row for the Gym Class Heroes concert.

For those of you interested, here’s the breakdown of my mile times:
Mile 1: 9:14
Mile 2: 8:42
Mile 3: 9:06
Mile 4: 8:49
Mile 5: 9:07
Mile 6: 10:00
Mile 7: 9:17
Mile 8: 9:47
Mile 9: 9:46
Mile 10: 9:40
Mile 11: 10:25
Mile 12. 10:19
Mile 13: 9:10
Plus: 2:23

It was an amazing race and I love, love, loved running through Seattle. We got to see the water, historical buildings, run through tunnels and highways. It was truly unlike any other race I’ve ever done and definitely makes me want to travel the country doing all sorts of races in the future.