San Francisco 1/2 Marathon July 2010 Race Report

Let me start by saying that the morning prep for the San Francisco ½ marathon did not go well.

Before going to bed the night before, I had laid out all the various odds and ends (shoes, socks, bib number, race belt etc) so my morning would be uneventful. I do this for every race as, on my best of days, my brain is not at 100% first thing in the morning. I peak somewhere around 3pm.

I had also had the forethought to coordinate with friends to share a taxi to the race start. A race start I’d like to add, that I would normally walk to given any other circumstances. The circumstances being that

a)   It would require me getting up 30 mins earlier. Uh no.

b)   I was already planning on running 13.1 miles and enough was enough.

This is where it all went wrong…

I was ready to go at 7am waiting on the call from my friends. I went to look for my phone and couldn’t’ find it. It’s the only phone in the house, I couldn’t call myself. The phone was also not ringing, my friend was supposed to call when she was on her way. I began to panic. Had she forgotten to call me? What if they were waiting on the corner and I didn’t know? What if she’d overslept and she wasn’t coming at all? If I needed a cab how was I going to call one because I COULDN’T FIND MY BLOOMIN’ PHONE!

I have a tiny home. It shouldn’t have been this hard. After turning every room at least twice I finally found my phone. Drama level: Defcon 1.

We headed out to the race start.

More ridiculousness…

Let me paint you a picture. It’s July, summertime in a park.

Do you have a pretty picture in your head with green grass, flowers and sunshine?

Yeah, well erase that. We’re talking about San Francisco. They had heaters.  Heaters people!

Yes, by this point I was officially wound as tight as a drum and I still had to run 13.1 miles through hilly San Francisco in the (now you know) freezing cold.

I sounds like it was terrible right? Well funnily enough it wasn’t.

I positioned myself at the back of the wave with the 2-2:30 finishers. Let me remind you, my last ½ marathon in Pasadena was run at a 2:50. I didn’t care. Being with my friends was helping my mental health much more so faster group it was.

You know what’s amazing? I kept up.

Almost immediately I realized that I was pacing somewhere around a 10:15 – 10:30/mile pace. Significantly faster than I’d run ever. Really, ever. What was even more amazing, was that I was keeping up the pace as I ran out of the park about 6 miles later. And as I charged through the half way point I came to that wonderful realization that I was on pace to hit a personal record. I felt great both physically and mentally and knew another big secret. From the next 4-5 miles (pretty much) we were running downhill. I knew that if I took advantage of gravity, I could get myself ahead so far that even if I walked the last couple of miles I’d come in under my goal. 

I’ve talked about how Gu is my fuel of choice for helping me run long distances.  On Sunday’s race I was fueled by the excitement of beating myself. It’s a magic elixir.  

So the long and the short of it, I killed it at the first of the ½ marathons in the new Marathon-A-Month program.

Finishing Time -  2:18:36

Finishing Pace - 10:35/mile

Crap, now I’ve set the bar.

Comments

[Ace]

Well done, and nice race report! The taste of PRs is oh so sweet....

[nike shox o'nine]

Experience is the na me give their mistakes. (Oscar Wilde, British playwright and poet)