Bloomsday in Spokane

My best friend moved to Spokane five years ago and ever since, she's encouraged me to come over and run the Bloomsday 12k. (Really, she's looking for a reason that will entice me to spend the weekend with her -- not that I need any enticing because her fine company is all the reason I will ever need to make the 275-mile road trip to her house.)

This year, finally, I agreed to do it. The timing seemed perfect: I've been working on my pace over shorter distances and Bloomsday is a 12k. Plus, as I said, I'm always happy to visit my wonderful friend.

However, I made a few mistakes in planning for this run.

First, I got the distance wrong. OK, that's really embarrassing -- but true nevertheless. I've got a metric conversion app on my phone and I used it to see what 12k translates to in miles: according to the app, it was 6.48. Easy enough. So, for the past several weeks, I've been doing long runs of 6 or 7 miles to prepare for the 12k. My aim? To run the distance in 60 minutes or a bit less.

Then, just a few days before we were to set out for Spokane, I got on the Bloomsday website. There, right in the masthead, was a bullet point: "12k (7.46 miles)." That can't be!, I thought. I went to a metric converter website and typed in 12k ... 7.46 miles. With a growing sense of dismay, I went to my phone app and typed in 12k once more. (I was starting to think that something was wrong with my app -- and building up a big head of steam, all ready to make a big stink about this crappy (free) app.)

Uh oh. I was right about 12k converting to 6.48 ... nautical miles. If I scrolled up a bit higher, I could plainly see that the kilometers translated to 7.46 regular miles. Boo! So much for being able to run the whole thing in an hour. I quickly adjusted my goal to 70 minutes. Not as exciting as "an hour," but I'd still be proud if I was able to do it.

I clicked back over to the Bloomsday site and, rather belatedly, looked at the elevation profile. My heart sank further. Why did I not research earlier and find out that it's a fairly hilly course -- with a big fat "Doomsday Hill" in the middle -- and that it starts about 1,500 feet above sea level? That was my second mistake. I suddenly felt much less confident about being able to run the distance in 70 minutes and mentally adjusted my goal to 75. Sigh.

Third mistake: I completely neglected to take into consideration the massive numbers of people who participate in this race. This year, there were over 49,000. I don't know if I've ever participated in a run of that scale.

Here's a picture I took on the morning of the run, while waiting for my wave to get the go-ahead to cross the start line:

Please bear in mind that this picture was taken at least 45 minutes after the run had "officially" started -- not including the elite wave of pro runners that was the first to go out. There were even more people stacked up behind me. So yes, a really giant run.

And one, apparently, that is filled with walkers who aren't that interested in being part of the last wave. You know, the one that's for walkers. When it was finally time to cross the start and start running, I found it almost impossible. Walkers everywhere. And where there weren't walkers, there were other people like me, futilely trying to run and being reduced to a jog at best -- or a jog in place at worst.

Eager to get rolling, I started dodging and weaving -- figuring if I couldn't run straight ahead, perhaps I could move forward by running side to side. I was still going so slowly that I started mentally planning to take a run later in the day so I could actually get some exercise.

After half a mile or so, I noticed a current of runners to my left and joined it. And by "current," I mean a row of 2 or 3 runners at the dangling edge of a giant river of walkers at least 50 people wide. I still needed to maneuver around frequent clumps of walkers, but at least I was finally able to start running at something approximating my usual pace. Some of the time, anyway. Even my tiny stream of runners would sometimes come to a halt when the course narrowed. Then I'd be back to jogging in place. I started mentally upping the time I'd hoped to achieve, wondering if it would be possible for me to finish the course in 90 minutes, let alone 75.

Finally, between miles 2 and 3, a readerboard sign at the side of the road: RUNNERS ON LEFT, WALKERS ON RIGHT. Wow, I thought, wouldn't it have been nice to have a sign like that at the very beginning of the course? Or information about it in the event handout? Perhaps it's assumed that people already know. And obviously, some people did. Others didn't, and the sign helped move more of the walkers over to the right. But not all of them. I was still doing a lot of zig-zagging. On one short and steep uphill, I had to move around a big crew of Army soldiers in full gear, with giant backpacks, walking squarely up the left side of the course. I'm all for supporting our troops, but geez Louise.

Happily, after mile 4 or so, the course opened up and slowdowns were much more rare. I finally felt like I was getting a good workout and even made myself slow down here and there to catch my breath. I felt a decent amount of anxiety about the famed "Doomsday Hill" -- .7 miles at a pretty steep incline -- and was looking forward to putting it behind me. But all those runs in my own hilly neighborhood must have been great preparation because it really wasn't that bad. I mean, I had to work hard -- but I never felt like I needed to stop and walk or anything.

The last couple miles of the run went really well. The course was flat, there was room to move, and I was in a part of the city I'd never been to before so there was a lot to look at. I checked the distance on my watch against the posted distance and was surprised to see that I'd run .3 miles more than what the mile marker showed ... must have been all the weaving around.

Then, suddenly, the course took a right turn to head downhill to the finish, about a quarter of a mile away. I sprinted down and crossed it with no idea of my time (I'd forgotten to start my timer at the beginning of the run). Even if I hadn't been able to run the event for time, I at least felt like I'd gotten in a good workout on a beautiful morning.

And we did get so lucky with the weather. It was raining and cold the day before Bloomsday, and the day after was so freakishly windy that it blew up a dust storm. Here's a photo from our drive home:

Yikes. There's no way I could have gone running in that. Or anyone else, I'd imagine. The happy ending to the story? Even with all the crazy slowdowns and extra distance from scooting around walkers, I ended up with a time of 77 minutes -- just 2 over my goal. Not bad!