Bands on the Run

I ran my ninth marathon yesterday, the inaugural Seattle Rock N Roll Marathon. Now, normally I shy away from big city mega runs-I prefer small laid back community runs-but I was on assignment for Northwest Runner magazne-and hey I had a job to do!

For the most part I had a positive experience-although this was my worst finish of any marathon I've run-the first time I didn't break 4 hours and the first time I thought I wasn't going to finish. I was doing well-I had trained properly- and everything was going smoothly-kind of, until mile 22 when my calves cramped up so badly I had to stop running. Evidently the 75 degree sunny day depleted my electrolytes and I didn't fuel up on them until too late. Man-watching my calves bulge out and overextend looked like a comic book super hero-but boy I bet Spiderman doesn't feel that much pain. I was able to jog-walk the final 4 miles to finish and it all could have been worst.

The course was decent- the crowd support was good-the volunteers were excellent-my biggest complaint were the bands. Not that they sucked-although a few did- it was that there weren't many out there- We were supposed to pass one every mile- I can only remember about a dozen of them-and out of that dozen only half of them were worth listening to. Oh well- The race rolled with its ups and downs on the course including the viaduct-which will be a running memory soon-but the race didn't rock. And my marathon time didn't rock much either-time to train better for the upcoming Victoria Marathon in October. See you on the run!