Last Sunday, my husband and I ran our first half marathon of 2012, the Whidbey Island Half Marathon, with our friend, Shannon. The race itself was great, but my story starts the day before . . .
Since Oak Harbor, where the race started, is quite a distance from home, we decided to find somewhere on the island nearby to stay. My husband and I signed up for this race rather late, and we started looking for a place to stay nearby even later, so it didn’t look too good for finding anything really close at first. Then I stumbled upon Fort Casey Inn, a group of Victorian style houses in Coupeville that are set up to rent out. Only a couple of units were available, so I quickly made reservations to take one unit with two bedrooms–perfect for the three of us to share. Then I found out Shannon’s husband was coming, too; no problem, plenty of room for all four of us.
My husband and I drove up on Saturday afternoon, stopping in Mount Vernon to enjoy the Kiwanis Club’s annual salmon barbecue, then crossing Deception Pass (which is currently scheduled to be part of one of my legs of the Ragnar!) and heading to Oak Harbor to pick up our packets. We wandered around the expo a bit after getting our shirts and bibs, then drove the 15 minutes or so to Coupeville and found Fort Casey Inn.
Since the office is closed Saturday afternoons, they had given me instructions for getting the key from the lockbox that would be on the back door. No problem; we found the unit, parked, and went to the back door. No lockbox. Went to the front door. No lockbox. I was starting to get a little worried. We found a number to call which got us to an answering service for Fort Casey Inn. My husband was able to finally get the answering service to understand what the problem was, and they took his number, promising to have the on call staff person call us as soon as possible. Thankfully, she was still on the campus, just not in the office; she called us back quickly and came over with a key, apologizing for the mixup; she seemed a little confused why there was no lockbox, but no worries, we had a key and took our stuff in.
Shannon and Pat were on their way by then. Shannon texted me and said their son, Brogan had gotten in the car and announced HE was going too. I texted back that was fine, but he had to sleep with them–we were giving them the queen bed while we took the full bed, ’nuff said? That cracked her up.
We found a little Italian restaurant not too far away that sounded good, and I called Shannon to let her know where to meet us. By this time we were all ravenous and anxious to do a little carb loading for the race–at least that was our excuse. The food turned out to be just okay, nothing special, but we were happy to have full bellies and headed back to the house to turn in for the night.
When we arrived, we noticed a car parked right next to the house and more lights than we remembered leaving on. Shannon then noticed a woman inside, watching us; we went to open the door with the key and she met us at the door, asking if she could help us. I was shocked; I said that we had rented the unit for the night, and she said THEY had rented the unit for the night. We stepped inside out of the cold while both she and my husband frantically tried to reach the on-call person, leaving messages, sending texts, and leaving messages with the answering service. The couple invited us to come in out of the porch where we were standing and we all introduced ourselves and chatted a bit, hoping that the person from Fort Casey would call back and help sort things out. Finally, the couple announced that they would leave and let us stay there, sorting things out with Fort Casey the next day; they couldn’t turn a child out at 9 p.m. at night. Good thing Brogan decided to come or we might have been sleeping in the cars!
After all the excitement, we were really tired, so the five of us said goodnight and went to our respective rooms to get some sleep. My husband and I got our race gear together, then fell into bed, hoping to get at least a reasonable amount of sleep.
Sunday morning bright and early, we were up and dressed for the race. Shannon’s husband and son weren’t going to the race, they were going to hang out at the house and go to the beach, so it was just the three of us doing the race. We drove the short distance back to Oak Harbor, not knowing exactly where in town the race started but hoping we’d see signs. No problem there; it’s a small enough town that the race is a big deal, and it was obvious where we needed to go. Parking just happened to be across the street from Starbucks, our traditional race day breakfast choice; a quick dash across the street and we had our breakfast in hand. Then it was time to find the start line and get ready for the race.
We all agreed that we each needed to run at our own pace, so we lined up together near the back of the runners but ahead of the “fast walkers.” I was secretly hoping to finally do a half in under three hours, but with our lack of longer runs, I had no idea what I’d be able to do. My husband was still getting over a cold and having some issues with his Achilles and calf, so I told him to not push himself, just go at his own pace. We started off together, then when my husband and I started our first walk minute, Shannon opted to keep running; we wished her well and promised we would NOT drive off without her!
At one of the first porta potties, my husband needed to stop for a bio break. I told him I was going to go on and to not push himself too hard to try and catch up. I didn’t know if he would catch up or not, but he never did. And I kept an eye out for Shannon, too, but I never quite caught up to her.
Now I was running entirely on my own, something I don’t do too often. I started initially running a 3:1 run/walk ratio, but I was feeling great, even with the hills at the beginning, and frequently i ran an extra minute or two before walking. I had my hydration pack with me, but I didn’t drink a lot of water. The weather was perfect, cool enough that I didn’t get overheated yet warm enough that once I was moving, I didn’t need a jacket at all.
The Whidbey Island half was a beautiful course, going along the water at times. We went through part of the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station as well; it was nice to have some of the military men out directing traffic for us, and I tried to make it a point of thanking them and all the volunteers and officers who were out there to assist us. Race like this couldn’t take place without the work of a lot of people, both on race day and behind the scenes.
The miles went by relatively quickly. I didn’t bother looking at my Garmin too often, but when I did, I was pleased with my time. I did some rough calculating in my mind and thought that at the pace I seemed comfortable with, I had a very good chance of setting a new PR. I tried not to think about that too much, though; I know that I tend to slow down in later miles, and with no runs longer than 9 miles recently, I didn’t know if I’d end up walking the last three or four miles.
I kept going with my 3:1 and occasionally 4:1 pattern until we got to the last hills around mile 10 or 11. I was still feeling good, but I decided that it would be best to walk up the hills on the steepest portions to make sure I did not burn out before the end. Once I was through the uphill portion, I started running again, going back to my 3:1 or 4:1 pattern. Then when I knew I was a half mile or less from the end, I just kept running–I knew that I could make it the rest of the way, and I was on track to finish in under 3 hours. As I approached the finish line, they announced my name and town, always fun to hear, and once I crossed (and passed the photographers), I finally stopped my Garmin and looked down:
2:53:11
My best time before was 3:01:45, so I beat that by over 8 minutes! I was thrilled; I happily took my finisher’s medal and started looking for Shannon, figuring she had finished long before. We connected and she told me where she’d be, so I went in search of something to eat and drink and then began watching for my husband. It turned out he had to take a couple of bio breaks; he finished about 20 minutes later. After we all had our chance to eat and start winding down from the race, we headed back to the car and drove back to where we were staying to clean up and pack for home.
Once that was done, we said goodbye to Shannon, Pat and Brogan and drove down to where we had been told to drop off the key. As we approached the office, we saw the on-call person who had let us in walking up toward the units; she motioned to us to come over, and apologized profusely for the mixup the night before. She had inadvertently left her phone in the car instead of taking it with her, that’s why no one could reach her, so once she got the messages, she started trying to figure out what had happened. She searched the system to find the other couple’s reservation; there was no record of it anywhere, we had the reservation. They had arrived earlier in the day than us, so she had been in the office and let them in; it’s not unusual with their units to have members of the party staying there arrive at different times and different cars, so she assumed they were the other part of our party, hence giving them a key and then giving us a key. She apologized again and said if we want to come back some time to stay at a discounted rate, they would be more than happy to do that–there’s no doubt they would remember us, LOL! We will probably take them up on that; it was a nice place to stay, and it would be great to go back and explore the area more.
All’s well that ends well. We thoroughly enjoyed the place we stayed (once we actually got to stay there!) and the race, so we will definitely consider doing this one again. And I got a PR–does it get much better than that?
