A visitor from DC and my Vancouver 1/2 marathon race report

First order of business: I want to acknowledge my first DC visitor to the Seattle 'hood: Yvonne! She arrived on a beautiful & sunny Friday, stayed through an abysmal Saturday and tuckered herself out kayaking on Sunday before boarding the red eye back to her life on the Hill. We had good food, laughed, walked a ton and generally caught up. It was great to have her here!


Once Yvonne headed out, I undertook my heaviest training week to date which meant that I logged 120+ miles on the bike, 17 poundin’ the pavement and 7 or so in the water. It was a great non-taper for my Eagleman warm-up 1/2 marathon in Vancouver on Sunday! My run club group (i.e., swimmers who run once in a while as an excuse to gather for yummy pastries, breakfast sandwiches and fabulous coffee) had mustered about 15 folks for the trek up to Vancouver including lab partners, significant others and friends of friends from high school. We’ve gotten to be quite the tight group in the last few months training together so the experience was a whole lot of fun!

Some folks headed up on Friday and others on Saturday. I stuck around until Saturday a.m. to allow myself to get in a long ride and Alden to make swim practice on Friday evening. The ride up was beautiful and pleasantly uneventful for my first foray into British Columbia. We arrived under cloudy skies and they opened up every couple of hours to remind us that yes, we do indeed live in a temperate rain forest! I saw photos of the beautiful mountains surrounding Vancouver in the guide books, but unfortunately did not have the chance to see them with my own eyes until we were headed out of town. But I’m getting ahead of myself with the story, which I know Nate detests so I’ll focus: We hit breakfast around noon with some friends (mmm, bacon) and then headed down to the Expo. No good deals from the vendors, but decent free loot. We shopped a bit, relaxed at the hotel and then had a great group dinner before heading back to prepare ourselves for the race in the morning. Now, we had some newbies among us, so serious time was spent discussing bag check protocols, timing your potty breaks, chip-shoe-attachment techniques, the benefits of wearing bright colors and how to transform a trash bag into a waterproof poncho... fun times! We headed off to bed early, hoping that the weather forecast would be wrong.

No such luck when I woke up around 4:30 a.m. It had been steadily raining sideways for several hours and the TV temp said 5 degrees Celsius- brrr! Revised my clothing plan to wear tights and a heavier top (since I don’t get to hang in the elite tent pre-race) to hopefully stave off the chills a bit. The start organization was the smoothest I’ve ever experienced which helped me to feel better as the combination of my anxiety (me, anxious before a race?! no way!) and the coordination of such a large group was a bit much for me to handle. We made it to the starting line just in time.



I ran with two fellow run clubbers, Nina and Greg, for most of the race. It was a first half for both of them and we were quite used to running together on Saturday mornings. Saw Alden at mile 5 or actually, he saw me and cheered as I was discombobulated navigating the water stop (see photo). The three of us plowed through the hill at mile 8 and I was still feeling great around 11 so decided to really open it up for the last couple of miles. It rained on and off for the whole race and my feet were fairly soaked, but otherwise I felt awesome! I had forgotten my watch at home which I think turned out to be a good thing as I just went with how I was feeling instead of focusing so much on the time. If I’d had the watch, I may have been tempted to slow down and instead posted a PR which beats my only other time in the half marathon by almost 15 minutes!

There was great post-race food including cold milk and yummy doughnuts. We all managed to find each other after the half, procure some hot liquid at Starbucks to fortify ourselves and wait for our sole representative to finish the marathon. Once he came in, we hobbled back to the hotel, showered and I had my first dim sum- mmm! While we were eating, the sun came out making for a beautiful afternoon which helped to neutralize my feelings about the lines at customs that kept us idling in no-man’s-land for about an hour before gaining entry back into the good ol’ USA. All in all, it was a fabulous weekend: a great city, good company for socializing, running & eating, loads of time with Alden and a PR- what more could I ask for?

Here’s a link to the photos (Alden’s are the only ones up at the moment, but he’ll add in more as they come in) if you want to check them out: http://www.huskymasters.org/photos/2006_05-May_Marathon/

And here are my official stats for those of you keeping score:

FINAL Place Place
Place in SEX in DIVISION PACE /MILE NO. COMPETITOR TIME
1121 354/4345 F 79/753 F3034 8:41 9033 Meghan McCarthy 1:51:48

This should be another good week of training for me. Alden is off to Swimming Nationals on Thursday so that will make for a lonely weekend, but hopefully his fabulous swimming will inspire me to train hard and his absence will leave me with time to get lots of work done as well. Wish I could make the Eagleman course brick with Cory on Saturday (mostly for the prospect of pizza afterwards, of course!), but will have to be content with being there in spririt. Happy training, y’all and thanks for reading!