Marcelo Belinazo

Coming back from vacation wasn't fun at all... work was pretty busy in Oct-Nov and as a result a lot of personal things suffered. Point in case: my blog.

 

One thing I tried very hard to mantain was my training plan for the Seattle Half Marathon. Luckly I was able to finish strong and ran the race two weeks ago.

 

The Seattle Half is very hilly (you know what I mean if you have ever been to Seattle downtown) but the weather was good that day. My result was a little better than I expected (1:58). I thought I'd be around 2:10 but the intense training sessions around my neighborhood, Education Hill (yes, a lot of hills), paid off nicely. You can check the official results here.

 

Some good friends were there with me: Gustavo Nascimento, Alex Pombo and Diego Dagum. The good news is that they all finished... The bad? Well, Diego, the Argentine, came first among us (just kidding, my friend).

 

Here are some pictures taken after the race:

 

 

Marcelo (left), Gustavo (center), Alex Pombo (right)

 

Happy with the medal!

 

That's it! I promise to share more details about this race including my playlist soon.

Vacations are going very well! Great food, amazing sightseeing... more to come when I'm back next week (including beautiful pictures taken by Maira). In the meantime, I've managed to squeeze a couple of running sessions around the Colliseo in Rome... unforgettable experience!

Maira and I are in Europe for our annual vacation. It's my plan to run at least once in each city we visit.

The first is step is done: Dublin. Last Saturday, just a few hours after stepping off the plan, I went to Phoenix Park with my cousing Vitor and ran an 8-miler under a beatiful irish sky - unheard of! What a great day to start a vacation!

Next stop: Rome and more running to come... if all that pasta & vino don't stop me.

Tomorrow 10AM (yes, Sunday morning) Juliano, Alex Pombo and I will kickoff our weekly long runs in preparation for the Seattle Half Marathon. We're doing a hill training in the Education Hill area. Here is the course:

 

 

Want to join us? We're meeting at the Starbucks on Avondale Road and NE 116th st at 10AM. 

Maira and I spent the last weekend (Labor Day holiday) in Portland. What a great weekend it was!

We always wanted to visit Portland and when we found out that Nike added it to the Human Race we didn’t think twice.

Portland is not far away from Seattle (around 175 miles) and apart from minor delays in the Olympia metro area the trip was painless. We decided to stay in a nice hotel in downtown (Monaco Hotel) to have quick access to the key attractions: shopping and food J

Seriously, the weather wasn’t great so we spent most of the time in the city. You can check out some pictures here. Nature is abundant there but the Columbia River Gorge, Rose Garden, and Mount Hood will have to wait for the next visit.

Now, a little bit about the race. The Nike Human Race is a pretty cool idea. It’s a 10K race that happens at the same day in more than 25 cities worldwide. You basically register yourself to run in one place but your results are stacked against participants from around the world. In 2008, these are some of the cities that hosted the Human Race: Melbourne, São Paulo, Shanghai, Taipei, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Rome, London, Munich, New York, Chicago, Austin, Vancouver, and, of course, Portland.

The race took place in the Nike Headquarters in Beaverton which looks like Microsoft’s main campus and I have to say it’s a very enjoyable place. The race started 8AM (why so early for Christ's sake???) in the Ronaldo Field. Yes, it pays homage to the great Brazilian soccer player Ronaldo Nazario.

Close to 4,000 runners participated in this 10K. The course was very flat (easy) and during the race the weather was quite nice (sunny / 65 F). I finished the race in a 52’33’’ (my personal best so far) and my position was 41,352 in the worldwide ranking. With that, I completed the first milestone in my plan to run the Vancouver Marathon in May 2009! The next step is the Seattle Half-Marathon in Nov.

But this race was about Maira's performance. This was the first time she ran 10K in her entire life and before the race she was quite apprehensive. Good news! Not only she finished the race but also she did it in a very strong way running until the end. Her time was 1:20’33’’ (position 118,399).

During the recovery, we ended up being interviewed by a journalist and our photos were taken for the official race book (supposedly). Closing the action, Nada Surf performed a nice concert for the participants and their invitees.

And that is pretty much all it! Enjoy some pictures (quality not great as they were taken from a cell phone).