The Seattle half is my favorite race, no question. So even though I had a monumentally busy week with the holiday and Dash’s birthday, there was no way I was skipping it. My running kind of fell apart this summer and I’ve been rebuilding since school started. My plan has been to focus on mileage and hope that my speed eventually picks up. Over the summer I was bonking during six mile runs and now I’m doing 14 mile training runs fairly easily so I’d say things are working out okay.
I went into the race fully expecting to finish with a new personal worst, with the hope that I would be able to focus on my love of running and not worry about pace. I’m happy to say that’s exactly what happened. This was my fourth year in a row on this course (last year I did the full) and this is the most fun I’ve had on it. I love this race because it’s a beautiful and challenging course, and a pretty small field (only about 3,500 people) so it has a very intimate, hometown feel to it. You have to love running in Seattle to want to do a hilly 13.1 miles here in November. I was really excited for this race because I love it, and because I’ve been doing better with long distance, and because after Thanksgiving AND Dash’s birthday I really needed a long run. We got decent weather and I felt great, despite still having these stupid plantar warts and losing another toenail. I hope that I will run a sub-two hour half again, but for now, I feel very happy with a new personal worst of 2:06.
