Every spring and fall I have a target marathon, this was because of being close to where I live and a first run rock 'n' roll marathon. This generally means it will be well run and they have great finisher medals! I much prefer the larger marathons, for instance, this one had 5600 full marathoners and nearly 20K half runners, thus my pace is generally slower for the first half of the race. I train at 8:20 miles and to run 2 minutes slower is difficult unless the race is huge and you are in traffic so I slow down automatically. I ran a negative split again and literally ran as strong as I had in May at the Flying Pig, the only difference was this marathon was more crowded and quite hillier. I am very pleased with the run and ran a sub 9 minute mile on mile 13 and a sub 10 minute mile on mile 25.
A perfect day greeted the mass of runners, it topped 70 degrees around noon and there was a nice breeze. Elite runs a well organized marathon and this event was the largest every in Washington state. 40% of the runners came from King county, 40% were out of state runners and 20% were like me, other Washington counties. The views were really spectacular, from perched majestic eagles along the coastline to the clear Mount Rainer view during the major bridge run.
The crowds, cheerleaders and bands were spectacular. I only heard about half the bands though as many seemed to be on break when I passed by, but they did continue to pipe out some good rock 'n' roll music for the runners. The only thing that I did not like about this marathon was the out and backs, we had too many miles looking at runners coming back in the opposite direction and it tends to distract you from looking at the city of Seattle. I hope they can change this. Also, I personally do not like Summer marathons, we were lucky weather wise this year, but the year before the now defunct Seafair marathon hit the 90's, never a healthy atmosphere for 26.2 miles.
I will consider running this marathon again and am glad I ran their first event. I obtained every spring goal and then some with finely learning to take it easy on the first half marathon. Who'd think it would finely sink in on my 22nd finish! :-)
