This weekend I had more or less only one thing on my mind…the half marathon that Bryan and I had to run on Sunday morning. I was not so much looking forward to it because I was not so much feeling very prepared for it. Despite my mentality we did it and we did it pretty good.
Friday night was a low key night at home to recover from the week. Bryan and I tag-teamed dinner of carb-heavy ravioli, chicken tortellini, and salad and called it an early night. Saturday was again very low-key. We had games going on all throughout the day, Bryan was trying to get his program to run for work, and the weather wasn’t something that made you want to go play in a park, thus we parked it on the couch for much of the day. We did manage a midday walk and our games early on in the day were victories.
Saturday night we set out to Capitol Hill to dine at Kizuki Ramen for a mystery shop dinner and race-fueling meal. We feasted each on bowls of pork ramen, chicken karaage (japanese fried chicken), pork gyoza, and spinach gomae (spinach and sesame salad). We were quite stuffed upon leaving and headed back home for the late start for the Longhorns against Cal. I stayed awake for most of it but admittedly snoozed for the third quarter while Bryan watched in agony as Texas lost to a very close fight to an annoying Cal team. We headed to bed for a good nights sleep before our race.
Thankfully the race start time for the half wasn’t until 9:30 am. We didn’t have to wake up so early so we took our time getting some coffee, breakfast, and our race gear together at home. I was happy that the sun was out and the temps were A-OK. Andrew met us at the house at 8 am and we set out for the eastside, to Carnation, WA for the Beat The Blurch half marathon. It was an easy and pretty drive to the start line and we had plenty of time to get ready and geek up. Right at 9:30 am they started calling people to start. Andrew, Bryan and I lucked out with getting the very start of the third wave.
Once we were called we were all off and starting to find our race pace. We said goodbye to Andrew early and Bryan and I fell back from him at our own pace. This route was an entire out and back on a beautifully forested and shaded trail that was really picturesque. The entire first half was all a very gradual uphill climb but we were both feeling pretty good through it all. We passed Andrew on his way back just before the turnaround. When we turned around Bryan and I kicked it up into higher gear.
At the 7 mile mark we each grabbed a Clif Gu from the volunteers and the lucious vanilla frosting thing fueled me towards the finish line. Miles 8-11 seemed to fly by for me and with our last water at the 3 mile point we realized that if we finished the last miles at the pace we were going we would finish in under 2 hours, something I had not at all thought possible at the beginning of the race. Bryan and I kept going and kept getting faster. Mile 13 was our fastest mile yet and our last 0.1 mile we each sprinted to the finish line to come in at 1:58. We felt great, I was standing upright and sweaty and out of breath but still feeling good and strong. We got our medals and found Andrew right away. We picked up a cold brew coffee, water, nutella sandwiches, cake and potato chips and found a seat to rest our legs. We sat until we had all stopped sweating and felt good enough to walk to the car to head back to Seattle.
We pulled into our house with just enough time to quickly take showers before turning on the Seahawks game. Unfortunately, the stupid Rams have our number and it doesn’t seem to matter if they are in St. Louis or L.A., but I think L.A. is way more annoying. We lost and we were bummed but again didn’t have long at all to cry about it because we had to get ready to meet Billy and Valerie for dinner at Pintxo for their Paella on the Patio night. We had a great dinner with them, seafood paella, cod croquettes, roasted beets, marinated manchego, mini chorizos, and bacon wrapped dates with wine and sangria sealed the deal.
I slept good last night and am still proud of how well Bryan and I ran together. Also glad that it is over!!!! I also want to wish my mom again a very Happy Birthday yesterday!!! I wish I could have spent it with her.
Chelsea
Evolving in the Emerald City 