Yakima River Canyon Marathon 2009

The Puyallup Girls: Cat, Abi, Jessica, Jenny, Me, Monica, Angela (Where's Linda? And Lesa?)

Whupped. That best describes me at the finish of the marathon. I felt pretty good for ten miles, a little tired for the next six and plain old whupped for the last ten. I felt the 100K every step of those last miles. The road through the canyon is severely cambered in many areas and when it tilted right it hurt my ankle injury, when it tilted left my entire left ITB felt it. But more than that was just a general fatigue.

On the other hand, this is a gorgeous marathon, running through the canyon of the Yakima River, the water flowing beside or below us the entire race. The road is carved out of the dry and beautiful hills, rock walls loom to the left, and drop off to the river on the right. And the weather was incredible! Starting out clear and sunny and 28 degrees, finishing near 60 in the afternoon. I actually got a sunburn!

Jessica and I ran together for 23 miles before I talked her into going ahead. She had a goal of beating last year's time by an hour, and at 23 miles she only had a half hour to do it. She didn't quite make it, but we agreed not to blame my slow shuffle, but instead blame the lady who took FOREVER in the porta-potty. We waited till mile 12 for a porta-potty with no line, only to have the lady that walked in just as we arrived at the aid station spend what seemed to be an inordinate amount of time in there (and to be fair, I'm sure she needed it - it was just frustrating to wait). There is a pretty long hill at mile 14 in the marathon, and we used the post-to-post method to climb it. The next big one comes at mile 22 and is one mile long. We used the same method to get up it, then I told Jessica to go, and go she did. From the crest of that hill to the finish is almost all downhill and I could see her way off in the distance running hard. I can't remember what her time was, but she was close!


Jessica flying to the finish!


My unhealed no-toenail-toe leaked.

My final time was something like 5:54. I was happy to come in under six hours - something I haven't done since the Marine Corp Marathon last October. I just looked back at my list - I guess my times got slower because I ran the triple, then a marathon on a couple inches of snow, then a double. All the others since then were 50Ks or the 100K. I shouldn't have been surprised to have slower times. The other statistic of note is that yesterday was my 31st marathon, plus 10 ultras for a total of 41. That's exciting!











Finishing.

























Happy post-marathoners Michelle & Steve