Thirty-five students from Trajal Seattle are registered to run in the Honolulu Marathon in December. I was concerned that most of them are taking too casual an approach to the full marathon (42 km) and not training enough, so I suggested that they test their strength and guts in the Seattle Half Marathon (21 km) on November 27th. Only five brave students took up the challenge. I don’t know whose brilliant idea it was to hold a marathon event in Seattle at this time of year, when it is almost guaranteed to be cold and wet – sometimes even snowing! This time the cold was bearable – about 5 degrees C for the start at 7:30 AM. But just when the starting air horn sounded, the cold rain began falling and continued all through the race. Clothing, shoes, socks – all got soaked, making it easy to get blisters on the toes.
So it was a rather miserable morning run, but the five students all finished between 2 hours and 2½ hours – quicker than I had expected, but it took its toll physically (most of them stayed home from school the next day. Now I think those five students realize what they are facing in the full marathon in Honolulu, and I hope they will make their friends aware of it too, but now it’s probably too late to begin an intensified training program.
Neal Colodner
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