For my long run this week I ran miles 4.5-13 of the actual half-marathon course. I thought it would be a good idea to check out the course and in particular the hills. It took 2 buses and about 45 minutes in elapsed time to get from my apartment to the shore of Lake Washington under I-90 (the intersection of S Day St & Lakeside Ave S). This is mile 4.5 of the half-marathon where the course exits the I-90 express lanes and moves onto city streets. As I started to run toward Leschi park I saw several cycling teams gathering and a lot of runners out for a run. I like to imagine that many of the runners I saw were out doing the same this I was – checking out the course in preparation for the marathon or half-marathon. The cyclist were something else: groups of 20-30 roadies all wearing matching kits riding 3 abrest taking up the full lane and moving at pretty much the speed of traffic.

The first few miles were mostly flat as expected. The absolute worst incline of the day came at mile 7.5 of the course on the 200m up E Galer. It is steep but it’s short. After that there’s incline all the way up E Madison. That section is pretty much the worst of it. The E Interlaken section is a little hilly but not as bad as I thought it might be since from the map you’d swear you’d be running switchbacks. It did seem to go on forever but I guess that’s because it’s 2 miles long! There’s a nice moment when you’re on Roanoke and you’ve come out of the forest along Interlaken and you see the Space Needle and downtown for the first time. The finish is basically at the Space Needle so on race day I’ll know that’s my goal. Then there’s nothing too steep uphill and a few nice downhills on the way to the finish. The last uphill comes about 500m from the finish as Mercer goes under 99 and then comes back up. In Vancouver there was a short uphill with 1 mile to go and it nearly killed me so I’m glad I know this one is coming!

All in all I think the exercise of running the race course will really benefit me on race day. It’s nice to have seen what I’ll be up against. It was also a nice change in scenery from always running my long runs in loops around Green Lake! I think I might try to do this route at least one more time in training. I figure if I double back at the start I could easily make it a 10 mile run. Specific training is the best training isn’t it?

Finally the astute reader may have noticed that I’ve gone up the 4 days of running a week. I kept it at 3 for a while but in the end I decided that 1 more short mileage day (like Sunday’s 2.5 miles) would be OK and easier to schedule than another trip to the gym.

And in other news:

• Stay tunned next week when I eclipse the running mileage year to date mark of 1000 km!
• I didn’t realize it at the time but the Dawg Dash race report was my 500th blog entry!

This week was nice and easy. After 3 weeks of long runs, tempo runs and speedwork it was time to take a step back week. This is the first Saturday in a long time that I haven’t done a long run. I have to admit that I was a little without purpose when I woke up this morning! However the inactivity will help me rest up for the 10K race I’m doing tomorrow morning.

Earlier this week I picked up my bib, chip and race t-shirt. Mom, I’m sure you’ll want to borrow the shirt because it’s bright purple and on the back it says “Go Dawgs.” The forecast is calling for perfect running weather tomorrow morning: sunny and 6C at 9am. I am so relieved not to be running in the rain! I’ve decided to adopt the habit of setting 3 goals for my race (#1 a minimum goal, #2 a realistic goal and #3 an optimal goal) so here they are for this race:

Goal #1: Finish my first 10K (a PB for sure) and enjoy running though campus because it’s ridiculously beautiful in the fall.

Goal #2: Keep up HMP for the first 4 miles of the race, remember this race is really a paced training run.

Goal #3: Pick up the pack for the last 2.2 miles and finish strong.

I’ll post a race report tomorrow afternoon…

The half-marathon is 40 days from today. 40 days! In honour of this event I spent some time surfing the marathon website. I’m now on the list of official registrants which is good. So far I’m the only Cecilia. I also discovered the colour coded elevation map.

“The Course elevation is moderately hilly starting at approximately 100ft. dipping at the low to 40ft, and topping out at the 200ft level.”

Yea, moderately hilly. Based on the map, here’s my mile by mile breakdown on the half-marathon course along with my own Easy/Medium/Hard rating for each mile. Realistically I know there won’t be any easy miles but it’s all relative.

In a few weeks I’m planning on doing a training run along the course. Well, the part of the course that isn’t downtown and isn’t on I-90! I’ll get to train on approximately the last 8.5 miles of the course. I think this will be a big help especially since that includes most of the “Hard” miles.

[14/10] I’ll post more on my week of training tomorrow but until then check out this movie trailer. It totally makes me want to run a marathon in 2007.

[15/10] This was a decent week of training. Really there’s not much to report. My 8 miler went quite well even if I did run it a little faster than intended. Since when is that a problem? Earlier this week I was having a little trouble with my feet. Just some soreness in my heel and arch. However, icing, taping and stretching seems to be doing the trick. I just have to keep it all up even though the pain is gone!

Next week is a step back week (only 14 miles) which ends in the 10K Dawg Dash race on Sunday. Last year the 5K Dawg Dash was my first ever race so I guess this will be a sort of anniversary for me. My current plan for the race is to do the first 4 miles at my target half-marathon pace (HMP) of 9:00 min/mile. Then for the last 2.2 miles I’ll run how I feel, hopefully that will mean either picking up the pace or maintaining it. I’ve never run a 10K before so I’m sure it will be an interesting experience.

[10/10] This past week was a pretty good training week. I spent the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in Victoria and Vancouver which meant working my training in around various other events. It wasn’t really a problem though especially since some of those events counted as cross training. More on the weekend is coming up in another post.

The other excitment of last week was the discovery of the website Chasing Kimbia. The description on the website says it best …

Follow the lifestyle and training of a small group of elite marathoners as they prepare for the Chicago and New York City marathons. Managed by KIMbia Athletics and sponsored by New Balance, these athletes have left their families in Kenya and Tanzania to train together and live together in Boulder, Colorado. This is your backstage pass to a behind the scenes view on their training & lifestyle during the build-up.

I’d encourage you to check it out. I am totally addicted.