Weekend Preview: Seattle Rock 'N Roll Marathon

It’s Thursday, again, which means it’s time for a weekend preview, again. I’m running a marathon again and having a contest again. Wow, that was annoying. I’m heading to Seattle this weekend for the Rock ‘N Roll Marathon up there. I’m having my weekly contest, but I’m also going with something different this week, too.

Just in case this is your first time here, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, Jack (6 1/2), is severely autistic. I wanted to do something to make a difference in the autism community and try to create a legacy for him, so I’m running 60 marathons this year to try to raise money and awareness for a charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism. So far, I’m through 30 of the 60 marathons and I’m reaching people and raising money. I guess it’s working?

Anyways, I have a weekly contest where I have people guess my time in my race for the weekend. Since this is a charity, it costs money to enter. But not a whole lot of money. If you think my time is going to be 3:10, you donate $3.10. To donate, you can click here or you can click on the “Donate Now!” link at the top of any page on the site. I’ll give you a little bit of insight into how I think I’m going to run to help you with your guess.

Winner is the person who comes the closest without bidding under my time. If I choke and everybody bids under, it’s the person with the highest bid. The prize is your choice of an Operation Jack t-shirt, tech shirt or sweatshirt.

Last week’s winner was Sarah Emerson, an Operation Jack supporter out in Maine. She plays every week and finally won last week. I hope she keeps playing and tries to win the entire collection.

I Need Your Help
There’s a contest called Chase Community Giving through Facebook. Bottom line is you can vote once with your Facebook account and the top 200 vote-getting charities will receive at least $20,000. Right now, I think we’ve slipped somewhere to around 80th or so. We were in the 30s and then in the 60s. Not a lot of votes separate the positions, but I’d love to reverse this trend!

Please, please, please, take a minute to help out! Even if you’ve already voted, I could still use your help in posting it on your wall. Thank you!

Does Anybody Want To Race Me?
OK, so if you’re running this weekend, we can have a virtual race. Send me an email and we’ll figure out the details, but I’m handicapping myself at 3:15. I’ll handicap you based on your estimated finish time, goal, recent results, etc., even for a distance other than a full marathon. Say you’re going to try for a 2:15 half. I’ll tack an hour onto your finish time as a spread. So if you go 2:12 and I go 3:09, I win. But if you go 2:17 and I go 3:21, you win. Make sense?

I’ll pick the spread to make it fair, and like I said, I’ll do it for pretty much any distance between 10K and a marathon. You pick what you want the bet to be, but basically, I have three main donation levels. One is $26.20 and that gets a t-shirt. $60 is a t-shirt and a tech shirt and $100 is a t-shirt, tech shirt and sweatshirt. You pick the level you want to bet. You win, I send the clothing to you. If you don’t win, I send the clothing to you, but you have to make the donation.

If you want to do this, send me an email or hit the Contact Us link and drop me a line.

This Week’s Race
OK, here’s the deal. On July 11, I’m running as a pacer for the 3:10 group in Missoula, Montana. I’m only pacing the first half, so I’m going to run even splits and get to 1:35 and then I’m going to run the rest of the race on my own while somebody else takes the lead for the second half.

I’m not worried about hitting 1:35 in the half. I absolutely have the ability to do that, and it’s not really a huge stretch for me. But when I’m a pacer, I take it very seriously, because I don’t want to impact anybody else’s race. I would guess that I’ve hit 1:35 or better in a good 80% of my races this year, although I don’t really aim for that, so if I did, I’m sure it would be a higher percentage. My fastest first half this year was 1:30:03, and for 13.1 miles, five minutes is quite a bit of time at that level.

But here’s the thing: I blew up last week and went 1:37 and it freaked me out. So my goal on Saturday is to run tight splits for the first half and hit 13.1 in 1:34:50 to 1:35:00. That is, by far, my biggest goal. Not faster, not slower. I presume I’ll be able to hit that and then I’ll be in a groove. There are some uphill climbs that look moderate in the second half, but the last 10K looks pretty quick.

I never know how I’m going to feel once I get running, but if nothing goes wrong, I think I can run this race conservatively and go 3:10. It’s going to be a similar execution to what I did in Tampa, where I went out with a goal of running in the 7:10 range and not straying, and I did just that until stiff headwinds slowed me down over the final few miles and I went 3:09:44.

I don’t think there’s any chance I’d go any faster than 3:09, unless I was absolutely flawless, in which case I could be in the mid-3:08s. But 3:07 or better will absolutely not happen. I’m not feeling fast right now, but I do feel strong, so I think there’s a good chance I could kick well over the last 10K if I’m in range for a good time.

That being said, if I was betting, I’d go with a 3:12. But I think I really have a chance at a sub-3:10 with the way I plan to run. So, that’s all. I really, really hope you play along! The hot summer is beginning and I could really use your support! And if you’re running this weekend and you want to race me, let me know! Or keep it in mind for a future weekend if you have something on the calendar down the road.

That’s All For Today!
Have a great weekend! I’ll have a race report posted at some point on Saturday!