Friday, May 16, 2008

Beat the Bridge

On Sunday, I'm running my first race in about 5 years. It's an 8k called "Beat the Bridge." You probably know that Seattle is chock full of bridges, sitting as it does between a bay and a huge lake. And since shipping is pretty big here, some of those bridges are drawbridges.

So every year they have a race that starts at the University of Washington stadium, which is exactly two miles away from one of these bridges. Exactly 20 minutes after the last wave of runners starts, they open the drawbridge. So you have to run a mile in 10 minutes or less if you don't want to get stuck on the near side. (A side note: apparently getting stuck isn't all that bad, as there's a band and munchies for the people who have to wait for the bridge to go back down.)

This should be no problem; I know I can run a mile in under 10 minutes, especially if it's only two miles. Then there's about 2.5 more miles to get to the finish line. So my goal is to run those first two miles in 19 minutes--that's a 9:30 mile--and after the bridge, whatever. I don't really care when I finish. I don't know if they have timing chips for this race, so I may never know my exact time, but that's okay.

So think of me at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time Sunday morning. I'll let you know how it goes!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ooh - sounds like fun!

Have a blast!

Love,
Sis

Machelle said...

Awesome! I had heard of it, but if it's longer than 5K I tune out. May the force be with you!

Anonymous said...

OK lady, how did you do? :-)

Love,
Sis