The Kirkland Half Marathon was this last Sunday (Mother’s Day!) and was also my first race of this year and the first of 2 half marathons I am running a week apart.  Following my awesome blogger friend Amy from Writing While Running’s advice to take 1 of my 2 back to back halves slow and easy, this was the one I picked.  The course is hard and mostly up hill and honestly, I found the scenery a bit boring (though running along the waterfront was fun for the mile it lasted).  So because I made the decision to treat this race as a regular long training run, I actually slept the night before!

When the race started, I caught myself keeping up with the fast pack.  I got a bit consumed by the race energy – it had been a while!  So my endorphins kicked in and I was running 8:30 min/miles.  Oops.  At mile 2 to shave off some time, I stopped to use the portable bathroom and spend a few minutes scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed (seriously, who does that?!?!)

The first half of the course was all up hill.   All of it.  And honestly, all that up hill had me bored and ready to be done by mile 5.  I was thankful for all of my hill training; it made running the hills effortless for me (and it’s nice to run past all of the walkers who didn’t hill train – yay ego boost!).  Living up on the Sammamish Plateau, I don’t have a choice but to run hills.  So many of my long runs are made up of miles and miles of some pretty steep suckers, not to mention I’m usually pushing the stroller up them, and because of this, I no longer feel lower grade hills.   Runners – if you hate hills, I totally recommend borrowing someone’s baby and pushing them in a stroller up a hill as fast as you can over and over.  The workout will suck balls and you will HATE me while you’re doing it, but when you run that hill again sans stroller, you’ll run it like a mother fucking champ.  Just sayin’.

I’ve had these nasty blisters just above the arches of each foot for a while now and the morning before racing, I had carefully bandaged them up and covered them with moleskin pads, following the advice I had found in an ultra-marathon running forum (I figured if anyone knows, it’s ultra runners right?).  Well, by the second half of the Half,  I hated myself.  No, I hated my feet.  The weather was misty but warmer and there were some puddles on the road that I had hit which had made my feet a bit soggy so between the sweat and the running, the moleskin pads were starting to travel.  Every time I lifted up each foot, the adhesive of the pads would pull and I could feel my blisters growing.  I wanted to walk more than anything but I knew that if I stopped running, I would never start again and while I was treating the race as just another one of my long training runs, walking 6 miles was not in the plan.   BTW running pros – what are your remedies to treat/prevent blisters on long runs? 

I finished this asshole of a race at 2:03 which shocked the shit out of me (not literally, thank God).  Considering how slow I felt I was running and the fact that I stopped to poop at mile 2 (yup, I’m an over-sharer), I am not sure how I managed a 2:03 finish.  Part of me was bummed I stopped at mile 2 – I would have hit sub-2 if i hadn’t.  Whatever, I’m saving that for next weekend at Rock ‘n’ Roll Portland.  That course is flat with one hill at the end.

After my race was finished, we stuck around so M.T. could run the kid’s dash.  M.T. loves to run; any chance he gets to run with me he jumps at so now when I race, he gets to do the kids’ dashes after (or sometimes before).

He finished 3rd from last, but he ran the entire thing and finished and that was enough to make me a proud mommy.  He even got a little Finisher’s ribbon and everything… which reminds me, I need to get that thing out of the car so I can put it on our bulletin board.  Whoops!

All right runners – I want to know: what is the most unpleasant race course you’ve ever ran?  How did you motivate yourself through it? And I know I already asked this but I’m asking again because well, my feet freakin’ hurt.  How do you treat/prevent blisters when you do your long runs?

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