Focus on a race

Lake Sammamish Half-Marathon

17 Feb, 2011 (Thu)

Roger Michel and Yumay Chang
Roger Michel and Yumay Chang are a husband and wife team.

They started doing endurance races many years ago, and slowly transitioned into also organizing events, from trail runs, mountain bike races, adventure races and duathlons.

They really enjoy the organisational aspect, finding new venues for their runners, and set a relaxed atmosphere at the races.


§staticmap(8594,5,450,250)Hello, on March 26th 2011, you’ll be organizing the Lake Sammamish Half-Marathon.
Can you tell us where it is located?

The run is in Redmond near Seattle in the beautiful northwest.

It follows a smooth gravel trail and is completely flat so it’s a popular run for both road and trail runners.

How old is the race and why was it created in the first place?

It’s only in its second year but the first year sold out.
It was actually a favorite running route of ours and we decided to make it race.

Credit : 4th Dimension Racing
What kind of route have you set up for the runners? How would you describe it?

It is a one way run from one park at the North end of Lake Sammamish to the South end.

It is 20% Asphalt, 80% smooth hard packed gravel so it’s very fast, first year’s course record was 75 minutes, and we had many dozen runners that broke their personal PBs.


How many runners do you expect on Saturday morning? What type of runners do you plan to attract?

About 500-600 runners are expected, about 75 percent of those are road runners, the rest trail runner since our other runs are all trail runs, so we have a large trail running client base.

Credit : 4th Dimension Racing
Do you organize other races during the Week-End? If so, on what distances?

Yes we do, we organize about 10-12 trail runs per year in beautiful parks across Washington State.

At all other runs the distances vary from 5 miles to 50 km, but each run has several distances so we offer a wide variety that friends, couples can come out together and run even if their favorite distances are not the same.

We also organize Mountain Bike Races and Duathlons.

At that time of the year, what kind of weather can we expect?

Usually end of March is about 60°F (13°C) temperatures with about even numbered sunny and cloudy/rainy days.

Credit : 4th Dimension Racing
Have you planned festivities around the half marathon?

Yes, like with all our trail runs there are always hot and cold foods included in the race and we will have sponsor’s tents and a really nice lawn area where people can relax.

Last year’s nice weather brought out lots of friends and support to join in on the festivities.

The race finished, what advice would you give a runner who has never been to Redmond before? A good restaurant, a fancy sightseeing?

Redmond is beautiful and there are so many places I can recommend!

The relatively newly build town center is nice, there is a farmers’s market, the town center shopping area is full with great stores and restaurants, and marymoor park (where the run is located) has some nice hiking trals that go by the lake, where you can sometimes observe eagles as well!

In a single sentence, what would you tell the readers of ahotu Marathons to make them register for the Lake Sammamish Half-Marathon?

Last year was our first year and runners absolutely loved the run, the organisation, volunteers and post race festivities, come and see for yourself, we would be honored!

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