We enjoyed a really nice weekend with my parents in Seattle for Thanksgiving, punctuated on Sunday by a rainy, windy run through the city in the Seattle Marathon.

I got my first chance to engage in that age-old Dad tradition, watching a parade while your kid sits on your shoulders. It felt good.

We enjoyed looking around the library.

And I took a few pictures around town.

We had three days to relax and walk around Seattle before race day, and we spent them in our cozy condo in Belltown, walking through Pike Place Market, checking out the Children’s Museum, and eating out, mostly at Macrina Bakery. Mmm. I had lunch with my fellow Jeopardy! TOC buddy Tom Nissley, where we talked about movies while enjoying chicken and pepper bacon sandwiches at Red Mill.

Sunday morning, Brent met up with us at the condo and then headed off with Dad to run the half marathon. 45 minutes later, I headed over for the marathon start. It had rained off and on in the preceding days, but Sunday brought out the full complement of rain and wind, from drizzle and breeze to downpour and vicious gusts. It wasn’t too cold, but spending four hours out in it left me pretty wet and exhausted.

I made sure I ran an even pace for as long as I could instead of going out strong and then collapsing, like I did in L.A. last year. I kept up with the 4 hour group for the first half of the course, but when the pace runners swapped at mile 13, the new pacer really took off, and from then on, I was on my own, with the reality of a 4+ hour race slowly dawning on me. I knew with the unfriendly weather and my enforced lack of training due to bronchitis, I probably wasn’t on track for a great result, but I was still a little disheartened that I didn’t even manage to improve on last year’s time.

We’ll see when I decide to tackle another marathon. For now, I had enough fun with the half marathon last month that I might stick with that distance for the time being. It felt great to finish the race, but I might have had enough for now.