Half-marathon training – Week 5 – Course preview

23/10	–	Rest day
24/10	XT	30 min swimming laps
25/10	6 miles	Tempo run, 4m @ 8:41 min/mile
26/10	4 miles	Slow & easy
27/10	–	Rest day
28/10	8.5 miles	Long run @ 10:41 min/mile, race course preview miles 4.5-13
29/10	2.5 miles	Recovery run
Total	21 miles	YTD: 619 miles

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!