I was very happy that I was able to finish it without giving up in the middle, or even choosing to do no-show.

It’d been quite busy since my last marathon in June, and I wasn’t able to job as much as I wanted or I should.  So, I wasn’t ready or this event at all. However, since I committed myself to a bunch of marathons towards the end of the year, and I didn’t want to miss the very first one.

The Redmond Watershed Preserve is very close to my house, but I had never visited there. It’s reasonably big, and it’s a very nice place to visit. It certainly is a great place for trail running or jogging, and I think I will visit there often from now.

I woke up at 7:30am, and it was still early enough to arrive there to get a nice parking spot near the start line. I had to wait for more than an hour since the race indeed started at 9:30am, but it was worth it.  As usual, I bumped into a few people that I know. The course for the marathon runners was a bit complicated since there were also 5 and 10 mile runs, and there were overlapping each other. For the marathon, the course was about 9 miles, and we had to do 3 laps.

The race started a bit after 9:30am, and I realized I wasn’t so ready for it. I however decided to see how far I could go, maybe two laps. There weren’t super hills or anything, but it consisted of a bunch of ups and downs. There were many people running very fast, but I was nowhere near them. There was one guy, who had completed running marathons in 50 states, and I kept up with him. He told me he just visited Washington state just for this event.  He actually made me decide to finish, and keeping up with him in the first lap actually helped me saving some energy for the remaining laps. Towards the end of the first lap, he told me to go ahead.  I didn’t actually want to go ahead, but I felt he wanted me to do so, and I did. However, I made a wrong turn right after that, and I ended up running 0.2 or 0.3 miles. I felt I wasn’t running the right course, but there was another runner right after me, and she also felt we were on the right course.

Towards the end of the course, I bumped into the same guy, and I found I was off. We then finished our first lap at the same time.  I took some rest and went off to the second lap. It was the hardest lap since I was running out of water. There was no water station in the middle, and the only place was the start/finish point of each lap. Since I didn’t have much water, I decided to just go ahead to the second lap without filling my water bottle, and it was a mistake. If I had some extra water, I might have finished the second lap a bit faster.  Anyway, I finished the second lap, and it took me almost 20 minutes longer than the first lap.

Before I started my third lap, I had a plenty of water, and made sure to fill up my water bottle. With the enough water supplied to my body, I was able to go a bit faster than the way I did in the end of my second lap. Fortunately, I didn’t feel like giving up in the middle of the race, and I was very much ready for my final lap. Since I was one of the slowest runners, I almost didn’t see anyone except the same guy I ran together in the first lap. He was still about 10 minutes ahead of me. I finished my third lap about the same time as my second lap, and the total time was 6 hours 13 minutes, and 14 seconds on my watch. It was much longer than any of my marathons ever, but it was alright.

I think I would like to try this again next year to see how much faster I can finish, but I will make sure to bring my camel-bag for enough water. My next marathon is in Leavenworth in October, and I am hoping to be a bit more prepared for it.