I was a little bit concerned about the trail condition because of the steady rain from the night before not to mention to western Washington's record breaking rainfall in March. I arrived at Redmond Watershed Preserve just after 8am and geared up for a warm-up lap of 6.55 mi before the official marathon event. I met Eric Bone, the race director, at the trail head by chance. He kindly explained the course changes and the turn signs for my warm-up run. The rain continued during my run, but the trail condition was surprisingly good. I mean it was wet and muddy of course but very much runnable with no sucking mud-traps.
After finishing my warm-up lap, I picked up my running bib (#807) and refilled my water bottle. It was about the right time for the race briefing. There were over 100 people getting ready for the event, but most of them were running either 5 mi or 10 mi. Only 20~30 were headed to the start line for a marathon.
I happened to be in the front line and started to run much faster than I planned. After the turnaround of the 2nd out-and-back section of the first lap (mile 3), I decided to slow down. Roger Michel caught me up there and we ran the rest of the first lap together. It was nice time to learn about his race organization and some of his long races including 100 milers.
After the 1st lap, I came back to the car and changed my hand-help bottle since it was sort of leaking, ate some snack, and returned to the trail for more laps. My 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lap became slower and slower. Actually I didn't want to push myself because I would also add at least one extra lap after the official race. During my 3rd lap, I met Takao Suzuki, a running friend of mine, who ran a marathon at Dizzy Daze one day before and came out to take some pictures. On my returning bound of 4th lap, I caught up Monte Pascual in his 3rd lap and had some good conversation. Always there are good things to learn from 10-star Maniacs. My official marathon finish time was 4:43:30 and it was 19th place out of 26 finishers.
After finishing the official marathon, I came back to my car, ate some more snack, refilled more hydration, and returned to the trail again for some more run. I notified Eric the race director that I would run some extra miles. I ran in a relaxing pace without iPod just to listen to the rain drops, my foot steps, and whatever was around in the trail (a true me-time).
Total mileage of the day was 6.55 mi + 26.2 mi + 6.55 mi = 39.3 mi, and the running time = 7 hrs and 3 mins. It was definitely a slow run but I wanted to take advantage of this race to get a long trail training for a preparation of my first 100 miler in April. I felt great and very satisfactory for this run.
