So this weekend I completed my
first official half marathon by participating in the Seattle Rock and Roll
Marathon series. I also had the
opportunity to raise money and awareness for kids and families in Africa who do
not have clean water. As an individual
(but mostly thanks to the generous people who donated) I was able to raise
$495.00 which was added to Team World Vision Seattle’s total of just over $322,000.
My training for the marathon (26.2
miles) started back in January. I had a
pretty good training schedule as well as a good bunch of people to run with on
Saturday mornings. As I progressed in my
training I was feeling more and more comfortable about completing my goal. I was leading the group (or at least close to
the front) in all of our shorter runs. For
the first couple of months everything was going great. My stamina was getting longer, I was becoming
more relaxed during the longer runs and I was feeling more excited about doing
the event.
Then life seemed to throw a
couple of curves at me. I got a couple
of minor injuries that caused me to miss some running days. I had gained some extra duties with Lukas
which took up some more days. All and
all I was not able to keep to the schedule that I had set up. However I was bound and determined to make it
to race day.
I knew that in order to not keel
over I would have to switch from the full marathon to the half marathon. In the end I am glad that I switched because
I may still be out there crawling if I had tried for the full. I kept training whenever I could squeeze in
the time between Lukas and work. The
training was sporadic but at least I was moving in the right direction.
So race day was finally upon
me. The night before I worked until
10:30 pm and then got up promptly at 4:00 am to get dressed and out the door by
4:30 am. I made my way up to the light
rail station and purchased my ticket for the trip to Seattle. It was a pretty full train made up of almost
entirely runners. I found a wall to
stand against and just listened to my music and tried to psych myself up for
the long run that I had in front of me.
Once I got off the light rail at
Westlake I started to make the walk to the Space Needle where it would
begin. Unfortunately I forgot to
purchase my monorail tickets at the expo so I had to hoof to the start. Not a big deal because it allowed me to
stretch my legs and take in the moment of what I was about to do.
Once I got to the Space Needle I
followed some other runners who were with Team World Vision to a little rally
that they were holding. There was a lot
of inspirational talk about why we were doing this run and how much fun we
would have. Then the lady in charge
decided she would curse each of the runners.
She decided to pray that we all hit a wall that we cannot just run
through. A wall so hard that it would
knock us on our butts. She placed this
upon us so that when we hit this wall we have no other choice but to ask for
divine help to finish the race. (Her
wish came true but more about that later.)
After a few pictures it was time
to head to the bag check area and find our starting spots. Since I did not have a bag to check I walked
around for a bit just listening to my music and drinking some water. Then it was off to section 40 out of 40 sections. That’s right I was placed in the very last
section.
So the peppy race announcers kept
trying to psych everybody up and get the race started on a high note. Around 7:15 am the first group was sent on
their merry way. Every 2 minutes another group was sent off cheering and
screaming. If you do the math you will
see that it took an additional 80 minutes before my group was allowed to
go. We must have walked a good 2 miles
to the starting point, none of which counted towards the actual marathon.
Scott
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