Seawheeze 2015 Race Recap!

Seawheeze 2015 Race Recap

Part 1 - Pre-race

We headed up to Vancouver Thursday after work. By the time we got there, it was pretty late and we grabbed dinner (I had a veggie burger) and then checked into our hotel and went to bed. We were getting up early to check out the Seawheeze Showcase store! I had been putting off buying new workout clothes for sometime in case I found something, but I was simply looking forward to participating in this event as a spectator, and if I found something - all the better! 

Vancouver is pretty

We made our way down to the Convention Centre and arrived at 6:25…and the line was already wrapping around the convention centre! I would estimate at least a thousand people ahead of us. I overheard one person saying that she lined up at 11pm on Thursday!

They opened the doors at 7pm and we figured that we might get in by 8:30….nope! we didn’t get into the store until 9:30 but that was OK, the time went surprisingly fast. There was some “entertainment” - dancing girls from Iviva, live performers and lots of people watching….even at dawn, many people looked cute and pulled together (NOT ME!) 

Activity inside the Showcase Store. It was Black Friday-esq

When we finally get into the Showcase room, its actually quite under control, although sizes and styles are disappearing rapidly!  I was slightly disappointed with the men’s offerings this year, but oh well! 

My Seawheeze "haul". Stripes on stripes :-)

Part 2 - The Race! 

On your mark…..

We got up bright and early to make sure we had enough time to get ourselves ready in time to get seeded at the starting line. We made a stop at Tim Hortons for coffee and a bagel with PB….yum, I love pre-race food. There were tons of people already waiting when we arrived, about 15 minutes prior to the start of the race (at 7 am). I felt like it was a perfect time to arrive, except not.

Get set….

As I had decided not to wear my GPS watch, my plan was to run with a pacer so I was really looking out for them and I knew it was important to make sure I was running in ‘Wave 1’ because I wanted to try and finish in a time of 1:40. The first mistake I made was somehow seeding myself in wave 3. I don’t know how it happened except to say that there were signs on the sides of the starting chute that told me I was in wave 1….but yet when I looked around I saw none of the pace “beavers” ….except when the race started and directly behind me was the 2:30 pace beaver….owwww. “I’ll just catch up with a pacer on the course” I thought. Hmmmm

Go!! 

I started running but it was definitely more of a walk because the course was congested, but not in a bad way, it was really fun to experience all of the excitement. As the pace started picking up, I didn’t really think about catching up to a pacer, but I tried to run as close to a 7:20 pace as I could just going on feel. Within the first mile I had already passed many walkers and was dodging a lot of slow people….my fault for starting in the correct wave. Good job to all of those that were correctly pacing themselves!

I had been running for 6 miles when I saw a pacer - hooray! They were hard to see, just wearing black(guys) or white (girls) shirts with “your pace or mine” on the front and their time on the back. When I spotted the pacer, he was running backwards and his funny shirt caught my eye. When he turned around I saw the time - 1:55 and my head sank…I had been running my a** off and I had just caught up to the 1:55 pacer?! I didn’t think I could sustain the pace I was going at. I ran with that pack for a little while and it seemed to me like they were going faster than 1:55, but who knows? I could have been tired and frustrated.

 I moved on and decided to find the next pacer. I knew I had started about 6 minutes behind wave 1, so conservatively I was on pace for a 1:49 finish, if I just stayed with the 1:55 group. Not too bad! For the next 7 miles, I just focused on finding the 1:50 pacer. I ran and ran….I even asked some of the volunteers if they had seen the pacer, a few looked at me like they had no idea what I was saying. About 4 miles from the end of the course on the Seawall I had caught up to a group that was running a good pace and I noticed they all had watches. I decided I would just run their pace and enjoy the last part of the race. Every single year I forget all of the twists and turns the course takes downtown and it just seems to go on forever! I think a lot of runners had problems with their watches too because with about a mile left I heard some people saying “300 m to go!” Yikes, I wish!

Finally we finished and I ended up with a time of 1:47. Two things (actually 3) that were different from the previous years were: 1) No finishing arch! I really liked the finishing arch, another blog I read said that the arch made finishing feel special and I’d have to agree with that 2) No finishing clock! There was no clock at all , so I had NO IDEA what my time was…when I asked one of the volunteers at the finish line he said I’d have to check online. This made it difficult because I was supposed to meet up with my friend and I had no idea what time it was. My bad for not wearing a watch. 3) There were VERY few spectators which was completely due to the weather but it just made for a different experience :-) 

Sunset Festival Yoga

Tips

All it all it was a fun time! Here are my tips for anyone planning to run this race: 

1. wear a running watch if you want to pace yourself or just know what time it is at the end of the race :-) 
2. Don’t use bag check, the lines are very long 
3. Try and use the bathroom before racing and don’t depend on it during the race. There aren’t many porta-potties along the course and they get nasty (the ones last year were HORRIFIC) 
4. Run without headphones. There is a lot of entertainment along the course and you’ll get the full experience if you lose the earbuds

I hope you enjoyed this post! Check out Seawheeze.com for future race information! 

xx

The "Golden Carrot" medal. Solid!