Half Marathon

Mark and I ran our half marathon on the Grand Ridge trail,with Evergreen Trail Run in Issaquah that was 13.1 miles. We picked this run because it was close by and it was a cheaper Marathon than others we saw. We just wanted to have a goal to work up to, so I could get back into shape after having Porter. Well we had trained by trying to run three miles every day around this loop in our neighborhood with a few good hills and run a long run on the weekend. Gradually making the weekend runs further and further. One of our long weekend runs was a 6 mile run that we did at my parents house from their home to Herald store. That was a hard run because it was in September and it was still hot in California.All of our other long practice runs we did on the ceder river trail. We did an 8 mile 10 mile and a 12 mile. I mention all that because when we had signed up for the race we had no real idea what it was going to be like. We never looked into anything more about the race until a week or two prier. So when we started the race it was a flat and wide gravel road and then suddenly we funneled into a narrow trail head that had steep switch backs for a few miles. (I don't know the exact distance)I tried my hardest to fight through my burning calves and my lack of breath,but soon enough I found myself walking up the hill. I quickly realized that I was not trained for this kind of a run. Over all the weather was good and the the trail was not muddy in most parts. But the trail run was definitely harder than what we had prepared for.The trail was rough on our joints and ankles I came close to rolling my ankles a few times on a root or a rock. For me it was hard to keep a consistent pace with the rocky parts, muddy parts, and the small streams we had to pass here and there. I felt like the people that were doing a 50 k run on this trail were crazy. I had anticipated to run a half marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes but instead we did this run up a mountain and down again in 3 hours and 14 minutes. A little treacherous and disappointing. I am glad it is over with. My right knee has been in pain ever since but seems to be getting better.I feel like the run was a love hate relationship. Well anyway we had pizza at the end in the rain. TD would be so proud of me becuase I had a vegetarian slice. In my category 20-29, I finished 22nd place out of 33 racers. With a time of 3:14:26.9. And poor mark who had to run at my pace finished 10th with a time of 3:14:26.0 out of 10 runners in his category. I kinda feel like a winner though because in both the men's and women's category the people that won first place both had my name. lol Sam Bliss 1:57:19.0 and Samantha Skeens 2:13:13.0. So instead of doing a 10 minute mile like we did in training. we ended up doing a 14:50.5 minute mile.Oh well. To express our thanks to Macaul for watching our kids while we did the run we got Macaul a Chocolate shake from Jack in the Box and lunch for her kids. Macaul has always been awesome when it comes to helping us out with the kids so we can do stuff like this. We did not take many pictures but here are the few we did take.

I had to put this one on here because Marks face is to funny.

This is Mark and I waiting in the car for our race to start. It was cold and muddy, so it was the best place to wait.