A Forgotten Half-Marathon

Kind of without thinking about it, we have a half-marathon this weekend. Originally, this was meant to be a “recovery race”. Meaning, we expected to have finished our first 50k and we wanted to put something on our calendar so that we didn’t just finish that race, sit down, and lose fitness until the spring. Having another half-marathon to run would, we thought, keep us in the frame of mind to keep our fitness up through the dark, wet Seattle winter.

But of course, our plans were laid waste by injury. While we did do a big, difficult race, and we feel quite justifiably proud of that, we didn’t get to complete our true life-goal, the 50 kilometer trail race. So we sat back, thought it through, and decided on a new goal. The Fragrance Lake 50k, in February.  So that’s all the motivation we need to put our shoulders to the grindstone and run through winter.

But we are left with this orphan half-marathon. We are running the Grand Ridge Half. The map lays it out as a touch short of a true half-marathon, at 12.25 miles. But trails are trails, and with all the vertical gain, etc., I’m sure it’ll be pretty darn close. It has 2,400′ of vertical gain, which is not too terribly much for us these days (by comparison, the 20 mile race had 3,950′.). It’s going to be a good tough morning, but I don’t imagine it’ll be grueling.

Our long training run for it, last weekend, was 10 miles and we did 1,400′ of gain. We returned to Cougar Mountain, scene of our 20 miler, to get in the long run on local trails. There are so many great places to run near Seattle, but most of them involve starting off with a 2,000′ climb over two miles. We wanted to do true trail running, and not start with a tough hike. So Cougar Mountain is was.

And after this we have an actual week of “rest”; we will probably get in 10-12 miles of easy road runs the week of Thanksgiving. But we won’t really be resting, because we’ll be flying off to Taipei to enjoy the holiday far, far away! Don’t forget to look up Rocco and Fetti while we’re there! They’ll be Instagramming the whole trip!

And then we’ll come home to months of freezing long runs in the dark, wet winter. Good news, good fun!