Race Report: Torchlight Run 8K

Yesterday I ran the Torchlight Run 8K in downtown Seattle. Last year I specifically trained for this race and ran it in a time of 40:53. This year I’m four weeks into half marathon training and so I chose to treat this race as a tune up race and my goal was to run at my half marathon goal pace.

Pre-race

The race started at 6:30 pm which meant that I had all day to second guess my eating strategy and search for something to do with all my nervous energy. I got down to Qwest field at about 5 pm, picked up my bib, checked my gear and found some shade to sit in. It was definitely warmer this year (about 25C) than last year. Late afternoons are the hottest time of the day in Seattle and the sun was beating down yesterday.

I did a couple warm up laps and within moments I had a side stitch! Not good! The same thing happened last year. I think the combination of the heat and an evening race just doesn’t work well for me because the only time I’ve ever gotten a stitch before or during a race is at the Torchlight Run. There wasn’t much I could do so I tried to breath well and lined up between the “8-9 minutes” and “9-10 minutes” pace signs.

The race

The course route heads north on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and then back south through downtown Seattle on 4th Ave. The northbound section is completely exposed so along with beautiful views of Puget Sound the sun was out in full force. The southbound section was shaded by the downtown building and went along the Torchlight Parade route in front of the 300,000 people camped out waiting for the parade to start! My Garmin lost its signal when we ran through the Battery Street Tunnel so while my timing is accurate my splits are off and I’m not going to bother reporting them. Basically I ran fast in miles 1 and 2, slowed down in miles 3 and 4 and then sped back up in mile 5.

My finish time was 42:43 which is a pace of 8:36 min/mile. This is faster than I’d planned to run and I was definitely pushing myself hard. What can I say, I got excited and couldn’t really bring myself to slow my pace down to closer to 9:00 min/mile. I’m not too concerned though. I’ve proved to myself that I can run at (faster than) my half marathon goal pace for 5 miles. I still have ten weeks of training to get that up to 13.1 miles!

Post Race

I didn’t really hang out after the race for very long. I wanted to get out of downtown before the buses got totally tied up by the parade. I did pick up some fruit, water and a Jamba Juice sample (or three). A smoothie has got to be the ultimate summer post race treat!

So all in all this was a pretty good race. I didn’t PB but that was never the goal. I’m taking today off to recover and then it’s back to half marathon training on Monday!

Place overall: 719/1537 (53.2nd percentile)

Place in gender: 176/618 (71.5th percentile)

Place in age group (F2529): 47/150 (68.7th percentile)

Place based on gun times, no walkers in the 8K.