Saturday morning, March 5th, my day started at 4 a.m.  (When I lived in Arizona, I was a morning person… these days, not so much.)  I hadn’t really gotten much sleep as the adrenaline and pre-race freak-out microbiomes surging through my body didn’t allow for such silly nonsense of a deep sleep.  So now I’m sleep deprived AND waking up at 4 a.m.  It took me at least 45 minutes to figure out my morning cup of tea.

Out the door at 5:45, we arrived at Redmond Town Center around 6:30, which was perfect timing… not a huge line at packet pickup yet (the expo part of it was set up at the finish line). The weather app said it was going to rain, rain, rain, but we were pleasantly surprised as there was zero rain in sight, and surprisingly, it was kind of warmish (if you think 50 is warm).  I was thankful I had layered with a short-sleeved and long-sleeved tee as opposed to two long-sleeved tees.

I’m sure no one is too interested about my choice for race gear, so I’ll just get to the pictures. Kick-off was at 7:30… this was taken about 5 minutes before.  (I started off in the back and I couldn’t see the start line or hear the gun go off).

James and I took our pre-race selfie, then he headed to the front of the line.

I had set my watch to pace me, which worked brilliantly if I do say so myself.  It’s shocking, but I’d never thought to do that before in the past.  So my watch started alerting me if I was going too fast or too slow, and I kept it at an even keel for the first 5 to 6 miles.  I was so pleased things were going so well.  Then I felt a pain in the center of my knee.  Kind of like my bones were grinding together?  Only not really?  This is about when we hit dirt and gravel, which I’m not accustomed to running on, so I don’t know if that made a difference or not with the knee issue. Regardless, I developed a painful knee, that got worse, and worse, and worse.  Whatever. I plowed on.

By mile 10, I realized that I could still get a PR if I could suck it up enough to run through the pain.  Alas… I could not.  The pain was getting pretty bad and I don’t do pain in any shape or form, so I limped my way in, only to crawl across the finish line (okay, I didn’t really crawl, but you get the picture).  I finished, and that is always my “A” goal, to finish… and any goal I hit after that is just bonus.

The weather stayed gorgeous the entire time.  Perfect running conditions, so the weather app was totally off on this.  At one time, the sun came out, and it started to get a touch hot and humid which caused me a tiny bit of concern, but there were enough clouds in the sky that I knew it wouldn’t last long.  Sure made for some great picture taking, especially as I had quite a few walk breaks in there.

Oh, and I gotta give kudos to my favorite aid station!  These ladies were dressed as unicorns at about mile 7, the halfway point (Unicorn Power).  I was so grateful for their kindness and enthusiasm.  It was a huge pick-me-up!  Don’t know if you can see it, but the trail is now mud… long gone is the paved part, not to be seen again until about mile 11.

This was an all-around fabulous race.  I can’t find fault with any of it.  There was an aid station every 2 to 3 miles with gels, water and Nuun.  The scenery was amazing.  Not only did we run along the lake the entire time, but holy cow, some of the lakeside houses we saw… jaw dropping!  Even the shuttle buses and the post-race festivities were fabulous.  Okay, well, I would rather have had chocolate milk than chocolate coconut water (WTF?), but they did have a yummy juice smoothie bar set up that was simply delish.  This was just a really good day, injury or no injury. Following is my Strava map so you can see where we ran… basically from Redmond to Issaquah.  Badass.

As for my knee… I’m sore everywhere, so I’ll give it a few days and then reassess the pain level. Say adios to my streaking… it was a lovely 65 days, but it’s time to rest now as my racing is my primary goal.  Gotta tell ya though, running at least a mile every single day for those 2 months sure got me good at running a mile and I’m happy I was able to do it for that long.  As well, I recognize the knee owie as a subtle sign, telling me it’s now time to strengthen those hip flexors!!

… so endeth the run streak…

And finally… what’s it all about???  The bling, of course!!  No cardboard tennies for this girl, I got the real thing!

Did you rock your race or run this weekend?  For those who don’t or didn’t run, what was the highlight of your weekend?

A huge shout-out to fellow bloggers Renee, Judy, and Sharon for the tweets!!  You made me smile!  Thank you!!