I didn’t do the same mistakes as the last Seattle Half-Marathon but I did do the same as the Vanvouver one. I was prepared for the cold, proper runner’s t-shirt and long-sleeved top, gloves, hat, etc. The weather turned out to be beautiful, blue sky. Still, I did worse than those last two half-marathons 🙁 Time: 2h6m.

The big lessons from this one?

• I should prepare better, especially for hills.
• I should eat light the night before so I can get more than the 4 hours of sleep I got last night.
• Charge the portable music player so that it doesn’t run out of battery at mile 2 🙁 and then have to just carry it, no matter how light it is.
• I should make sure that my stopwatch has a charged battery. My Zune doesn’t have a clock!!!
• Not that a Zune clock would have made a difference given that it wasn’t charged either.
• I should make sure that I read the “lessons learned” from the previous half-marathon and not repeat EXACTLY the same mistakes.

I was doing 8min/mile for the first 4 miles or so, trying to finish in 1h45m (yeah right!), when I felt like I was running out of energy. While my legs were ok and I was not out of breath, it seemed as if I didn’t have any energy left in me 🙁 I slowed down but then the hills started; I had to walk for some of the really steep ones. There was definitely something different energy-wise. Neither of the last two half-marathons made me feel sooo sleepy like this one afterwards.

I must get ready for a good half-marathon soon. I know I have it in me to do better.

Update: I just got the official result… 2:06:09. Apparently I did the last 6.9 miles 4 1/2 mins faster than I did the first 6.2, despite the hills in the second half. I did feel really bad after the first 4 miles and till half way, so that’s not a surprise.