Love ‘em or Leave ‘em Valentine’s Day Dash

A friend of mine and I like to couple business trips with cool races in the city we’re visiting. When we found out we were going to be in Seattle we immediately decided upon this event. Simple, cute little 5K around Green Lake.
The event itself is good sized for a 5K — about 2,000 participants when we were there. Online registration was a breeze, as was packet pickup. The vendor area was much bigger than we were expecting. My partner in crime enjoyed the chocolate samples — it is a Valentine’s Day race after all.
The starting line organization was handled very well — good amount of portapotties (always a necessity), and clear signage for people to line up based on their expected time. About the only thing I didn’t like was they allowed for strollers, which meant some artful dodging to start the race.
The course is flat, flat, flat around the lake. If you’re looking to PB this is a perfect spot to do that. The scenery is also wonderful around Green Lake. The atmosphere is very festive, and we thoroughly enjoyed the costumes.
As for my race itself, well — after two miles I fell apart and struggled to maintain the pace I did the first two in. However, my friend encouraged me through the last mile and I managed to finish with a time of 23:43, 19 seconds off a PB. I’ll certainly take that (even if she did beat me).