SeaWheeze…I’ve had the opportunity to run SeaWheeze 3 times. I was one of the lucky people to run in the inaugural year & then I went back and got those amazing plaid shorts in 2013 (still one of my favorite pairs). In case you don’t know, SeaWheeze is put on by Lululemon and takes place in the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia. It was my first international race back in 2012 and is a great event.
I was one of the lucky people to get a photo on Facebook at the first race, they don’t do many photos at this race so I was pretty excited :).
That being said, it is different from other races. What do I mean by that? Well read on to find out :).
Registration: I’m going to be honest here, registration for this race is super stressful. Lululemon uses Eventbright for their registration and unfortunately it’s not able to handle 10,000+ people registering at the same time so there have been a lot of problems over the years. Personally and I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but this is my opinion, it’s time to go to a lottery system. It will eliminate the issues with the server not being able to handle the demand. Obviously we got in, but it was a mess and I know a LOT of people who got stuck in the dreaded waiting room forever.
Race Shorts: Instead of a finisher participant shirt, Lululemon does a special SeaWheeze specific short. They send the shorts in May so that we can train with them and to ramp up the excitement for the race. This year’s shorts initially were underwhelming compared to years past, but in the end I found that I really like them. I picked the speed shorts but they also had the tracker shorts for women (I heard that they ran small). The black & white is quite easy to match with every color under the sun and I don’t even notice the faces, lips, eyes, etc. that are on the ladies shorts.
Pre-Race Communications: Lululemon did a great job of keeping us informed, they send out multiple emails discussing the fact that the air quality wasn’t as good as normal due to fires in Northern BC. They also sent out multiple emails regarding the procedures on getting into the showcase store.
Pre-Race Showcase Store: For the first time ever, Lululemon announced that they would be giving us a sneak peak & selling some of the special SeaWheeze gear online about 2 weeks before the race. They announced it on social media and sent an email. You were allowed to buy 2 pieces and only 2 pieces. They were very clear that if you tried to buy more than 2 pieces your order would not go through. I was one of the lucky people to get the speed shorts and I also got a new bra.
Showcase Store: In another first, Lululemon gave us a full sneak peak of all the gear that would be for sale at the showcase store.
Ladies, it’s the moment you didn’t know you've been waiting for. #seawheeze pic.twitter.com/NBU609Tohx
— SeaWheeze Virtual Half Marathon & 10K (@SeaWheeze) July 27, 2017
The store is an interesting thing… A lot of the hype around the race is about the showcase store. It’s where you can get special edition SeaWheeze product that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s gotten to the point where people line up on Wednesday & camp out in anticipation of the 7am Friday opening. Seeing as this was Sean’s first time in Vancouver and I really didn’t have any desire to sleep on the street, I got in line at 3:30am.
I think I was about 500 people back from the front and I was in and out of the store by 7:30ish. While I love Lululemon and this is a fun part of the event, this year I was slightly underwhelmed. I normally love to get the speed shorts, this year, there were several solid colors and maybe 2 patterns, neither of which really jumped out at me. I did get 2 new swiftlys (short sleeve & tank) & an Energy Bra. I didn’t see a theme in the gear like they’ve had in the past although the colors & patterns did go together. Honestly I thought the gear this year was boring and with the exception of a few things the rest you could find in the stores.
Expo: After going through the store, I was going to get by packet but decided to wait for Sean. I went out to the expo to see what was going on there. I got in line for a cute mountain tattoo from the Clearly CA sunglasses booth.
I got a bottle of water from the Flow table & had a smoothie from Vega. The test truck was there but it wasn’t open that early & I don’t know if they were giving out product or not. There was a booth where you could see some of Lulu’s innovation and coming products & give product feedback. They also had yoga classes and other activities going on throughout the day.
Packet Pick-up: I went back to our hotel to wake Sean up. We eventually made our way to the convention center to get our packets. When we got there the line was really long so we decided to come back later in the day, you could pick up your packet until 8pm.
Race Swag: Once we picked up our packets, we got a nice drawstring backpack that you could use for gear check, a water bottle, a container of Nuun and Sean got a free drink from JJ Bean, I didn’t have one in my backpack. Instead of a race bib, they give you a wristband to wear which gets you into the festival and race. The first 2 years I did the race they gave us chips for our shoes that had the founder Chip’s face on them. This year it was the normal D-Tag like Rock n’ Roll uses for it’s races. That is the only thing that showed we were even in a race.
Race Day: We raced over to the convention center to meet up with the ProCompression Ambassadors & I was so surprised to see a sea of black & white socks. It was pretty awesome.
Once the photos were done, Sean & I headed to the start line, it can be really crowded and he should be near the front so we were lucky to get to the corrals early before they were packed.
They had pacers, I lined up behind the 2:05 pacer and Sean made his way to the front, he would run a 1:35!! I heard from others after the race that it was very difficult to get into the corrals and I saw a ton of people on the sidewalk waiting to get into the under 2 hour corral.
As usual, instead of starting the race at 7:00am, they started talking at 7:00am and I think we started the actual race about 10 minutes later. Which is actually a big improvement on year 2 when we started over 30 minutes late.
Course: The course was different from what I had run back in 2013. There were a few hills at the beginning as we made our way through the city and then we were by the water for a good portion of the course. We went over the bridge into Kitsilano where the first Lulu store is. This is the only out and back section of the course. Once we got back over the bridge, we headed towards the Seawall. The seawall isn’t very wide so there is some weaving in and out around runners. I was fortunate to be in a section where the runners were somewhat spread out and I didn’t have to jockey for position. I heard that it was really crowded at some points.
The seawall is my favorite part of the course, it’s really beautiful. There were a lot of groups out supporting the race, from the fire fighters, the WestVanRun group (incidentally one of the very first accounts to follow me), the hippies, the mermaids, etc. etc. there was enough to keep us entertained.
The finish was also different this year, we kept going on the seawall, past our hotel, towards the convention center, where the finish line was on the water! The first 2 years, I remember having to go back up to the street where we had to climb a hill to the finish line, this was much better in my opinion ;). I ended up with 13.03 miles, not sure if the course was short or it was the way I took the tangents but I was a little shy of the normal 13.1.
I was happy to see that they had more mile markers this year in addition to the km markers. The first 2 years I think they only had one at the 10 or 12 mile mark.
Medal: SeaWheeze always does a unique medal, this year it was a super heavy, medal Cairn. I was shocked at how heavy it was and thought it was really nice.
Post Race: After we finished the race, we made our way up to Jack Poole Plaza to get some treats. They handed out bottles for Flow water, they were letting us grab multiple bottles, got a wet washcloth to clean up and then a pair of finisher sunglasses.
We were lucky to not have to wait on the ramp for too long to get brunch, which this year was a box of snacks. I actually really like this idea because it takes so much less time than a buffet. The snacks were all healthy and they were designed to help us recover faster. My favorite was the chia pudding, super yum!
After eating our treats, we made our way down to the expo area where we had more Vega smoothies and got our runners reward from Saje Wellness.
Sunset Festival: Initially I didn’t think we would go to the sunset festival, but we were kind of lazy after the race, I was exhausted and after a super yummy brunch from Ritual we just hung out.
Sean & I eventually walked over to Stanley Park where the festival was going on. What a fabulous location for a party! Thank you to Pavement Runner for the photo.
There was a lot of food options, we had sushi, a veggie burger and fries and toasted marshmallows. We stood in line to get into the gear tent which didn’t have anything I was super interested in. There was a huge yoga class and then 2 bands. We chatted with our friends from social media and actually had a really good time.
Overall thoughts: SeaWheeze is a great event, but it’s focus isn’t necessarily on the race. I think that the race is the catalyst to get everyone to Vancouver but it’s more just one facet of the experience more than the focus. If you are looking for a competitive race, this is probably not the race for you, I’d recommend the BMO Vancouver Marathon for that.
Would I come back? Definitely! I enjoyed the whole weekend, Vancouver is a beautiful city and everyone is so nice. That being said, will we come back? I don’t know, I know that Sean wants to run Squamish 50/50 and Fat Dog 120 so we might have to make a choice. Time will tell.
Did you run SeaWheeze? Do you want to run SeaWheeze?
