Seattle Half Marathon

Yesterday, the family ran the Seattle half marathon, a Thanksgiving tradition. Our dad wanted to win his age group for the fourth year in a row, and he got anxious when we left the house only 45 minutes before the race started to make the 5 minute trip down to Seattle Center. Wayne and I lined up with our dad at the front, while Kathy and Karen were further back in the mass of 7000 people behind us.

I started out fast, and as it turns out, I kept up the pace. At mile 6, my time was 39:08, (6:31/mile), and after a couple slower miles in the middle, I picked it up again and finished in 1:25:52. My weeks of long mileage training helped me keep the pace I had set throughout the race, and I never felt out of breath until the last couple hundred yards. I did suffer a minor ankle injury. I'll call it "White River tendonitis", as it is similar to the tendon inflammation I got after the White River 50, though not nearly so bad.

Our dad finished in 1:44 or so, and Wayne managed a PW (personal worst) after pulling a muscle at mile 2, and finished in 1:56. Our dad was happy that he could still beat at least one of his sons, which softened the blow when he found out he was only second place in his age group. He lamented his "end game", in which he had run up alongside another older man near the finish, who then sped up and beat him by fifteen seconds. He thought he should have stayed behind the other man until the very end and then made a surprise sprint past him. Warren is still waiting for the official results to come out to see whether that was the person that beat him in his age group (they've been having computer problems) - he hopes it was someone else who beat him by five minutes.

After the race we went back to the house and had a spectacular brunch with some of the other racers and friends. Kathy is wondering whether she should do the Vancouver marathon now.