Month: May 2023

Seattle

At the end of May, I spent a week in Seattle. I could not help to compare the city with my first impressions from 6 or 7 years ago when I visited it for the first time. At that time, I liked the city very much because it was like San Francisco but more relaxed and safer. The town was growing, and many new skyscrapers were in development. Also, Amazon was increasing its presence by building more offices in the city. It was a busy place but chilled also. One thing that helped is that although people complained about the weather in Seattle, I had great weather both then and now.

View from Space Needle

Nowadays, many companies choose to keep remote work for their employees. That makes Seattle look like a deserted city. Prices for houses outside of the town grew. Instead of busy people on the streets, you see more homeless people. This change could give people a sense of insecurity. That might change again if more companies ask employees to work from the office.
If you want to see Seattle, you can wander downtown and visit Space Needle for beautiful views. You can also take a ferry to Bainbridge Island for lovely views from Elliott Bay. Regarding attractions, you can take the boat to Washington Lake or hike the mountains close to the city. Next time I will do that.

Interesting looking skyscraper

What is impressive about Seattle is that it all started 170 years ago when the first colonists settled in. The main business in the area was often changed throughout the years. It began with exporting wood cut from the forests, then mining coal or building ships during the gold rush. In 1897 even the mayor of Seattle quit his job and went on for the gold rush instead.
During the First World War, planes and ships were built here. Later the Boeing company drove innovation in the city. Then Microsoft became a vital software company worldwide, and recently Amazon changed the experience of delivering products to customers everywhere in the world. All major software companies have offices here.

There is one explanation for that. Seattle has the highest percentage of college and university graduates of any major U.S. city. This might be the secret to the city’s success. But let’s take a look back at history. Seattle’s first colonists came here in 1851, and the University of Washington was founded in 1861, only ten years later.

Space needle has been a symbol of Seattle since 1962

The adaptability to change in this city is a lesson for survival for everyone. One could also understand the importance of education in developing a community.

PS. While talking about change, an AI may write my next blog posts. Or has it already started?

Gothenburg half-marathon 2023

Gothenburg has a long tradition of organizing running competitions. The first edition of the Gothenburg half-marathon was in 1980. Before the pandemic, there were over 60000 runners in some years participating in this famous race.

This building is called “The Lipstick” because of its shape. It is considered the ugliest building in Sweden. You have excellent views from the top of it because you don’t see “The Lipstick” building.

This year there were only 38000 people registered as the race is growing again after the first post-pandemic edition last year. Some things make this race unique. It happens on Saturday, while most marathons and half-marathons happen on Sunday. Another thing is that the race starts at 1 PM in contrast with other races that begin in the morning. People are grouped in 25 chunks, departing one after another based on their expected finishing time. Due to the grouping of people, the start lasts for 3 hours ( from 1 PM to 4 PM). If we add that the last people pass the finish line sometime after 7 PM, that makes it a full-day event in Gothenburg from the morning until evening.

The Poseidon statue is a symbol of Gothenburg. At km 16 in the race, you run around this monument.

Each group has a designated area where the people should gather at a specific time. The organizers take that group of people and bring them to the start when their time to run has come. It is pretty impressive to see that.

Unfortunately, I was seeded by default in the group with a target time of 2:50. The only way to be moved to a faster group was to have a time faster than 1:45 in an official half-marathon ( or similar times in 10k or marathon). Based on my previous results, I wrote to organizers asking to start in the 1:50 group, but they rejected my ask because the rules needed to cover that. My suggestion to organizers is to improve those thresholds ( add more criteria, not just 1:45), as it’s not fun if you want to run with a pace of 5’15″/km to run in a group that has an average speed of 7’30″/km on narrow streets. My friend Bobo was lucky. He had an official time under 1:45 and was placed in the 1:45 group.

Skansen Kronan fortress

It was a hot day on May 13th. The organizers emailed participants the day before, asking people to keep it calm and not target personal records or good times because of the weather. On the positive side, they had water and isotonic drinks every other kilometer. That differs from most races with only 3 or 4 refreshing points on the route.

View from the fortress at km 18 of the race.

Considering these things and that the route had uphills and downhills, I decided to enjoy the sightseeing and do a slow race. To enjoy the run and the show and not care about the time. By the time I started the race, Bobo was about to finish it. There were no events during the race, and I finished at 2:10, less tired than after other races. Bobo had an ambitious race and good result finishing in 1:48. Quite impressive given the circumstances.

I liked that many improvised showers were on the route with cold water. You were supposed to run through them, but one participant in front of me stopped under the water, and I had difficulty avoiding him.

Close to the finish line after 20 km run

Another positive thing was the live singing bands. There were more live bands than kilometers on the way. They played music from classical, marching bands, rock, or PostModern Jukebox style. Generally, you’ll see three or maybe four bands in every half-marathon, but not around 20.

The finish happened inside a stadium, similar to the Malaga half-marathon, and I like this part as a running competition is historically connected with the stadium. A special mention to the wonderful crowd of people that was encouraging the runners all the way in the city. Some people brought chairs and drinks on the street and sat to enjoy the show.

Happy to have finished a difficult race

I am delighted that I had the chance to run all the races I planned last year and even one more (Malaga). That means five half-marathons in 9 months. In the meantime, I also ran 1000 km from that moment, and now I passed the 9400 km mark.

This time I will not make plans like the previous year, but I would like to run in the Bucharest half-marathon on October 15th as it would be a symbolic cross of the 10000 km run in a race that was my first half-marathon run back in 2015.