Whidbey Island Marathon

I posted about the social, fun part of my Seattle trip... so here is the nitty gritty of the actual run!  Like I mentioned earlier we had the whole fire alarm incident the night before, but after that everything went really well!  We woke up, got some food in us and headed to the shuttle.  It was actually pretty chilly in the morning but that was good because by the end of the race it was pretty dang hot!

Sunrise

The sunrise was absolutely beautiful and we had a lot of fun just goofing around before the race.  It was a good thing that we started with everybody because they didn't have the starting time things at the beginning, so everybody started when they started the clock!  The course description said that there was going to be more water stations and more stations with things at them, but they weren't as numerous as they said... :(  I was glad that I brought my own energy chews because they only had one station giving out GU's the entire race and they definitely didn't have chip check in points.  So, all the people who were waiting for alerts at home never got any until the end.  That part of the race didn't thrill me but everything was really amazing.

At the start almost ready to go!

Within the first mile... looking happy haha

Getting ready for a hill

One of many hills

Beautiful scenery before mile 7

Happy to be done!

I wanted to make sure that I didn't go out too fast like I did at Chicago and then hate myself for the rest of the race.  But we started out at a pretty good pace and I felt great!  The hills were pretty intense but the scenery was enough to keep my mind off the fact that some of the uphills were two miles long!  We did a good job all sticking together until about mile 21.  We all ran up all the hills until mile 18... that one was just a beast.  It was so long and so steep that it was probably faster that we walked it!  I can't believe that people ran the whole thing...

This is my favorite picture of the entire race.

We are warriors!

I felt great the entire race but then I got a little mentally bored around 24.5  Which is a lot better than my other races!  I didn't necessarily hit a wall but there was a definite not wanting to run anymore.  I finished in 4:31 which was my slowest time yet, but it felt great and I was happy to go out on it.  This was the hardest course yet so I am not at all upset with my time.  This race is one where I felt the best afterwards too :) :)  So everything was good to end on.  I keep telling people that this is my last full (at least for a very long time) and I think I actually mean it this time. haha.

JVG