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Yesterday we ran the Oakland Marathon, the first such race in 25 years. Today, I’m limping around, legs sore, foot aching, but excitedly telling anyone I can about what a great race this was.

Oakland is a city bursting with so much enthusiasm for anything good that comes its way. Witness the Raiders fans for Exhibit A of Oakland loyalty you don’t want to mess with. It’s also a city that represents the world. Not just a black vs white racial mix. It’s everyone from everywhere. And for the most part it works. It’s diversity in people, food, ideas. It’s more complicated than crime statistics. If we ever live anywhere else, something will be lost that you can’t find anywhere but Oakland.

I’ve now lived in this city for 7 years and Patty was born here. We first moved to Oakland right after Kelly our daughter was born because both of us worked in the East Bay. At first we rented in Rockridge, later we bought a house in Glenview and watched that area emerge as a local dining center on our very own block. We live in a place where I take public transport to work, we walk to our local restaurants and stores, and all the neighbors kids run through each other’s houses like they were their own.

This is also the city where our running lives were born. The East Bay is home to some of the best runners and running anywhere in the world. While Lake Merritt forms a running hub with it’s dependable 5K perimeter, the hills above Oakland provide world class trail running over high Bay Area ridges to deep redwood ravines. Further east, beyond ‘the tunnel’, are endless miles of unbroken multi-use paved trails spanning the valley below Mt Diablo — perfect marked routes for marathon training. This is a place to get fit. Running fit.

Later we joined the Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders and eventually became board members. Last year the club was approached by the event organizers of the Oakland Marathon looking for a local club to partner with. The club agreed and we became the official training partner. We took on over 100 runners to train them each Saturday, running them all over the East Bay.

It was obvious that we had to drop any other plans and take part in this event.

While I’d plan out the LMJS training group routes and map them each week, hoping not too many of them would get lost, we planned our own journey to the race. A goal was to minimize how much time we spent on the pavement, so we alternated between long trail runs deep in the regional parks for strength and duration, and long pounding flat canal trail runs to build straight out long running endurance and some sense of pace. In one memorable run we set out pre-dawn with head lamps to run 20 miles in Lake Chabot. Thousands of feet of elevation change ahead of us we made it about 1 hour before it started to steadily rain. The trails became mud, we saw almost nobody in over four hours and when we were finished, soaked and muddy, we were tougher. At least mentally.

There’s almost always more to the journey than the destination itself. Finishing a marathon is largely (for us at least) about successfully getting to the start line ready to go. Months of long runs, sneaking runs in where they could fit, day or night, in the dark, in the rain or in the rare sunshine. Someone along the marathon route asked me “How do you run so far?” I thought of a winter full of running. That’s how you run this far I thought, you commit, you train, and you don’t miss workouts even if 4 hours of running in the rain one Saturday morning is the last thing you want to do. In the end the journey was already a near success, for the first time I was lining up at a marathon with no specific injury and was ready to roll. Just 26.2 miles of the journey to go…

–

At 7:30am we were off. Helicopters buzzed overhead. The sky filled with confetti and we ran under a semi-collapsing inflatable start line. It was a rocky yet memorable start. I looked down at my watch to see just how slow we were going. 8:30 pace. Way too fast but it felt like the slowest we could possibly run. Apparently the taper had worked. We slowed as the race adrenaline leveled out and settled in behind the 4:20 pace group leaders more by accident than anything. We decided we’d use them as a pacing wall, that we wouldn’t run faster than them for the first 10 miles.

Every mile, as we reached one of the official mile markers, we’d walked for one minute, then pick up our pace enough to catch back up to the 4:20 pacers. This took about 3/4 of mile if we did it right, faster if we surged too hard. Then we’d settle in behind them again. At this point their pace seemed so very slow, but we knew later that would change. A long way to go.

We quickly passed through the Temescal district and past our favorite coffee shop, Remedy, which was unfortunately still closed. No latte to go. Hundreds of people were out along Telegraph cheering. Next stop was Rockridge, where we ran the full length of College Ave. Again, lots of people out either watching or cheering. Lots of kids had made signs. Already we’d seen more spectators that either of our previous two marathons.

I’m in the bright yellow top, Patty is next to me in pink arm warmers as we head up Broadway towards Rockridge
(from flickr)

Beyond Rockridge we headed up to Lake Temescal. The hill, all part of the miles of climbing in the first 10 miles of the course, still felt easy on the effort scale. Others around me panted, or walked, or simply dropped back. We maintained pace, each mile slowly catching the 4:20 pace group again and settling in.

At the Lake I refilled my water bottle on schedule and emptied a ziplock bag of Gatorade into it. The official course beverage was Powerade fruit punch which we decided was the same flavor as cough medicine and couldn’t imagine drinking. Patty’s bottle was only half empty, but she seemed ok with that. We also took a Gu every 3 miles. All was going well on that front, for now.

Beyond the lake we entered the hilly residential streets of Montclair. People’s driveways filled with home made aid stations run by their kids. One family had a giant spread of banana bread and fruit and other goodies laid out for the passing runners. I felt bad I couldn’t take anything. I hope they realize how much support they provided just by being there even if most marathon runners aren’t going to go for banana bread 8 miles into a 10 mile climb. Their presence was awesome and as I could note all through the course, in any neighborhood we passed through, the community support for this race was like nothing I’ve seen in any race.

We finally reached the Mormon Temple that looks out from the East Bay hills over the whole Bay towards a distant San Francisco. We looked down into Oakland beneath us and mentally sketched out the route that lay ahead. Even a straight shot to the downtown buildings where the finish line waited seemed a long way. But, one mile at a time and we’d get there. I still felt good and it was all downhill from here.

Past the Temple we dropped hard downhill on Lincoln. The first mile was very steep. We tried to think of the advice we’d been given at Big Sur: Fast turnover. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. Our pace still quickened and we left the 4:20 pace group long behind us. Half way down the hill, less than a mile from our house, our daughter was waiting for us with her Grandpa. We each grabbed a replacement packet of Gatorade from him and I gave Kelly a hug. “Ugh! Daddy hugged me and he’s sweeeaaattty!”

We continued on as the downhill became much less steep through the Dimond district, past our local Peet’s coffee and Farmer Joe’s grocery store, past I-580, and down Fruitvale. The inside of my left knee started to ache a little. Crowd support was more scattered, but resounding enthusiasm for the race. People sat on balconies or on lawn chairs or just outside a local store, watching us run and cheering us on. Others just stood mouth open and watched and didn’t know what to make of it. I wonder if we inspired anyone to run next year? Or even just to run at all? We ran past car repair yards and Mexican markets and taco stands smoking grilled meat into the air. My tummy groaned. I guess time for another yummy Gu!

I really enjoyed running though this part of town. It’s not a part of town I spend much time in so to be able to run here and have some kind of connection with the people who live here was something you just can’t get on a regular day. People here didn’t even speak the same language as me, their signs of encouragement were in Spanish (”Sí se puede”), but to them I represented support for their part of Oakland, the part much maligned in the press, but yet full of great people and culture. Another interesting feature was the police who were helping with traffic control all over the city were also fully fledged race supporters, cheering on the race participants and us in turn thanking them for their help. One community, at least for a sunny Sunday morning in March.

As we headed back towards town I felt sad that this part of the course was ending so fast. When I’d thought of the race, imagined what it would be like while I trained all winter, I though of this part the most. The chance to see another side of my own city.

Unfortunately the miles were ticking past and we were soon in the mid-teen mileages. I refilled my bottle on International Blvd, about a mile past schedule. We’d taken half a Bonk Breaker on the steep downhill between mile 10-11, then a Gu at mile 15. Frankly I was getting a little sick of all the sugar and I could feel my nutrition getting away from me a little. My legs were starting to feel the fatigue too, although about what I would expect. All in all it was going well. Patty said she felt like she’d like to have felt better at this point and she still was only a little into her second bottle when I started my third.

As we ran back towards town on a long hall down International Blvd, a man yelled out “Where did you start running?” The man running next to me yelled back “Downtown!” pointing to the downtown buildings in the distance. The man next to me said to me “Ha, he probably thinks we only ran a few miles to get here,” “Yeah,” I replied, “but I bet he thinks that’s still a long way to run!”

We eventually turned in towards Jack London Square and ran through old produce warehouses and historic red brick buildings mixed with new developments of shiny metal condos and lofts. This was a theme of the more industrial parts of the course: old and new. thanks to the Jerry Brown push for redevelopment of the inner areas of Oakland. He would be proud of how the city was being represented today at least.

It was here we were joined by the back end of the half marathon race. And I mean the BACK END. Four across walkers were the name of the game and we were forced to weave around them for the next 8 miles. Could they not have timed it a little better so that equivalent paces could meet up with each other? I suppose that’s complicated. Oh well, with the full marathon crowd thinning as the miles went on, at least it made it still feel like a busy race.

At around mile 18 we headed across to West Oakland with it’s seriously industrial edge. “This isn’t a safe area, run fast” yelled one spectator. He was joking. Sort of. We ran into Kelly’s school teacher here too, she was running a leg of the relay. At the industrial art workshop of the Crucible we run through an archway of metal with flames coming out of it!

By mile 20 Patty and I were both struggling with pace. It’s those late miles before the finish line seems something you can push for that are the worst. The 4:20 pace group caught us and I ran with them for a mile. We hit the 20 mile mark together. Then the 21. Then I waited for Patty to catch up and the pace group was gone from sight and we never saw them again. We entered some part of town we’d never been before, some industrial back streets of overgrown lots with fallen down wire fences and discarded mattresses and trash. A part of town I’m betting not many people have run through before, at least not for recreation. During this section I was also trying to swallow another half of a Bonk Breaker and it wasn’t going well. I throw the last 1/4 of it on a pile of trash and give up eating for the rest of the race. My stomach wasn’t interested anymore.

Around mile 22 we emerged from industrial wasteland where-the-hell-are-we to near Kelly’s school. Her and her Grandpa were waiting there. Some kids and parents from her school had set up an unofficial aid station but had run out of cups a while earlier. I discarded my bottle there, I was done with Gatorade anyway and gave Kelly another gross hug. It was good to see them again.

We crossed over the the Lake right to the point where I’d met Patty for dozens of runs after work as we trained for the race all winter. Just one trip around the lake and I was done, like I’ve done hundreds of times. No problem. Except I was beyond beat.

And hot.

Hmmm, I hadn’t noticed that up until now. I took a couple of cups of water at the aid station and poured them over the back of my neck and then my head. The first cup of water to run off my head and down my face felt like I’d been splashed with a salt water wave. The cool breeze from the lake hit my wet body and an I felt a surge of energy. I headed off towards the Grand Lake theater and then back around towards the Lake. Another interesting part of the city, but too late in the race to feel a lot of appreciation for the scenery. At the mile 24 mark I stopped for my walk break and look back. Patty was nowhere to be seen. I started walking to the aid station up ahead instead of resuming running, grabbed some more water to pour on myself and to drink. I looked back again and Patty was still nowhere to be seen. I felt like I needed to get running so I headed off. It was the end of our run together.

I rounded the top of the lake and hit mile 25 running quick and strong. I passed a bunch of full marathon runners but they were very far apart. Someone yelled “Go full marathon runner!”, and a half marathon runner yelled back “Go all of us!!”. I thought, hmm, you have no idea what mile 26 feels like. But then I remembered what a big deal my first half marathon was and put the idea out of my head. We all have our limits and pushing past them is always an achievement to be acknowledged. I didn’t walk at that mile marker, with 1.2 miles to go, I kept pushing and my pace was actually good and strong. I turned off from the Lake towards downtown, glancing back to see if I could spot Patty at all. I wish she’d kept her bright pink arm warmers on, but in the crowd of people and the bright sunshine she was gone.

I took some final water and headed up towards the 26 mile marker in the shade of the tall downtown buildings. Again I stopped again and waited. I could hear the crowds of the finish line around the corner and someone yelled to me “You’re so close, keep running!”. Still no Patty. I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like minutes. Maybe it was just seconds. Eventually I decided to finish the job. I took off round the corner and ran through a corridor a cheering spectators and across the finish line. My time was 4hr 24min.

–

I rounded the corner and got a foil blanket wrapped around me (the first time in a marathon, I felt finally like a marathoner) and a pretty cool medal handed to me. John Windle, one of the LMJS regulars was handing out medals. It was nice to see a familiar face. We chatted for a while until Patty came through the shoot in 4hrs 28 min.

In the end this was a fantastic, awesome experience because it was a truly unique community event. Thanks go to the organizes who put on an amazing first showing. And of course to everyone out on the course who came out to support the event. Performance wise, well I don’t know. Running a marathon is a shot in the dark. Pick too fast a pace and you’ll pay double at the end. Pick too slow a pace and you’ll still feel horrible at the end, but you’ll have a slower time. We wanted to go under 4:30 and on a pretty tough course we more than met that goal. In the end, who cares. We’ll have faster times, and probably slower times in the future, but what I really wonder is if another marathon will ever better this one in that special way that comes along so rarely in life. Somehow I doubt it.

–

When we got home Kelly had left us a card with a flower taped to the front of it:

Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders, Marathons, Race reports

Another training cycle has begun to taper.

Oakland Marathon: 2.5 weeks away.
Leg status: semi-trashed.

Actually, things went pretty well. We basically executed our plan despite the mud and the rain this year, and neither of us are injured. I filled in a lot of the gaps on that graph with either swimming, biking or yoga. We could have done more tempo work and more track work, as usual.

As for what we’re hoping for from this marathon… fun! It’s the first marathon in Oakland in many years and I think the city will respond well to it. I’m hoping for good crowd support as we run though all the neighborhoods that make Oakland special. For a goal time we’ll probably vaguely shoot for 4hrs 30min, but after the past two marathons I’m really disinclined to make predictions.

Marathons are a long way.

Marathons, Running Marathons, oakland, oakland marathon, taper, trashed

I’m officially faster.

All year we’ve been doing trail races, with little standard distances. Today I finally got a chance to put the pedal to the metal (in my still basically slow kind of way) and do something about my 5K time, dropping it from around 26:10 to 23:55 today. Of course I still can’t pace, especially not at sub-8:00/mile, so I went out way harder than my plan, spotting a 6:05 pace on my GPS before backing back to around 7:10-7:20/mile. My first mile went by in 7:10. The next mile was slower, but more like my target, 7:30. The third mile was punishment for my too fast start and my average pace faded off but was still under 8:00. It was only some fast little kid laboring along on my tail that propelled me up the final ‘hill’ to the finish.

That reminds me, when I was a kid the fastest runners could run less that 8 minutes for a single mile that they’d make us do in Phys-ed. I never could. Today I ran 3 miles in a row less that 8 minutes. It’s a small little running milestone in my mind.

There’s not much to say about a 5K. It’s over so fast, but man do they hurt. Back to long slow trail miles for me.

Speaking of which, on the other end of the spectrum, at the least the other end for us, we had a great 17.5 mile run on Christmas day as we build back up to marathon level running. This 3hr 40 min run was at Lake Chabot, starting near Skyline Blvd (high) and running down and around the lake, finishing with the climb back up. Total gain/loss was about 3000ft and by the end I was pretty beat. I guess that’s about my endurance limit right now.

Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders, Marathons, Running, Trail Running

On Sunday we took part in, and completed, the Big Sur International Marathon. This was our second marathon, and, what a difference 9 months makes.

Anyone who knows anything about this marathon knows two things:
1) it is often considered the most beautiful marathon in the country.
2) it is one of the hardest marathons in the country.

These two factors seem to be appealing to us, though it might take some soul searching to figure out our attraction to more and more difficult goals of completion rather than picking something easier and doing better. This is the kind of thing that is drawing us closer to the ultra marathoning world and further away from the flat course optimum speed marathons.

I think the reason for this is probably a combination of not being naturally fast, our desire to run our races together, and our past life hiking these same trails that we now run. We seem to be in it for the challenge of completion and the beauty of the journey. Perhaps speed will come, (and I’ll come back to that in another post), but for this marathon, again, completing it was the goal, enjoying the course was paramount, and a sense that we did well and ran strong for our current abilities in the face of adversity important.

However, I was also asked several times about what time I wanted to run. Since Big Sur is said to be 20 minutes or more slower than other marathons I said if I could PR (against my other injury plagued first marathon), or break 5 hours, then that would be complete success. With the six hour time limit and the prospect of more hill running than I’d ever done, I imagined a scenario where I could only walk uphill, limp downhill and generally walk aimlessly for hours until I was either pulled from the course for taking more than 6 hours or preemptively leaped into the Pacific Ocean. I hoped that wouldn’t be the case, but couldn’t discount it completely as I truly wasn’t certain my body was ready for this.

Finally the time had arrived. My parents were visiting from Australia and my parents-in-law took on Kelly early Saturday morning while we packed up and drove south the 2 hours to Monterey. Our pack list filled all the space of a notepad page, imagining hot or cold race conditions, cold start with warm finish (note: buy throwaway gloves at expo), cold waiting for bus (what if they have run out of TP? camera?) , post race needs (what if we need to stitch our own arm back on?), if we had our car nearby, or not, what to bring to eat (what? 8 packets of Gu??), what to buy down there (pasta place reservation?) etc. We had a surprisingly complicated checklist for what should require a pair of shoes and some sunscreen.

EXPO

Down at the expo we picked up our race numbers and chips and then shopped for a while. I came away with $80 of Big Sur branded (mostly Asics) gear, so really hoped I’d finish, and also a signed copy of Bart Yasso’s new book. He’s the chief running officer at Runner’s World and maybe the nicest most interesting guy in running. He also has a quoted as saying that if he could run one marathon he’d make it Big Sur. How can you not like the guy?

I asked him about running the course and he said to negative split it, that although the second half in hilly, it’s a net downhill and to save yourself in the first half and use the energy to work the downhills in the second half.

Later in the day we saw Jeff Galloway talk. Now here’s my problem: I’m a runner. I’m a sucky runner, but still a runner. That means, I run. I don’t walk. Walking is not the challenge running is. On the other hand, I’d rather make it through an event strong than ‘run’ hard the first half and then implode at mile 18. So, we listened to him answer questions about his walk running, the strategy of dropping the walk run ratio down to 1:1 or 1:2 on the hills, and other Galloway wisdom and by the end we both thought for this race it could be worth a shot. For this kind of course, where the ups and down were going to make energy conservation critical, we thought it couldn’t hurt. We’d keep our planned pace, but we’d do some walking.

RACE PLAN

So we formed a race plan over our spaghetti and marinara that evening, largely formed off advice we picked up at the expo:

1. We’d use 4:1 run/walk ratio. This was very different from any walk/running we’d done before (mostly either walk through the aid stations only, or walk 1 min every mile). When the time hit a 5 min mark, we’d walk a minute then run again. We’d do that until Hurricane Point (a 2 mile climb starting at mile 10) where we’d do 2:1 (run 2 min, walk 1) to get to the top. If the going got tough later on we’d do 2:1 and then 1:1 until we completed the course.
2. We’d run 11 min/mile average pace until the hill. After that we’d do the best we could for the last half.
3. If Jeff Galloway ran by us (pacing for a 5 hour finish), we’d run with him.
4. Eat a Gu shot 15 minutes before the race and every 45 mins on course
5. Run down hills with caution, don’t brake, shuffle. Save the quads!
6. Drink a cup of water at every aid station.

RACE

We spent the night in Salinas, CA, about 30 minutes of iceburg lettuce fields east of Monterey. Set alarm for 2:45am, woke up at 2:30 and made coffee. Yes, 2:30am. It was vomit inducing. I put on my race t-shirt and shorts. Stuffed an iPod shuffle deep into a pocket in case the going got tough. Added 8 Gus. Yum. Over that I layered a long sleave shirt. Over that stuff, a pair of fuzzy pants and a fleece. We grabbed our stuff and headed back to Monterey. Outside it was warm, already. I knew I wouldn’t need my fleece.

We parked in a garage and boarded the school buses for the start line. It took more than an hour to wind their way down the coast in the dark. Half the people on the bus were talking loudly to each other, nervously telling strangers about their lives, while the other half stayed quiet, silently knowing what lay ahead, that perhaps by the time that made it back to the finish line hours later they might be changed forever. That makes some people disappear into themselves while others cover it up with apparent mindlessness.

The area where we started was filled with people already. It was good people watching. There were people doing push ups. There was much personal grooming. That a large number of people still run in cotton socks was an interesting fact. After a final trip to the port-a-potties we headed to our start spot on the road. A lone bagpiper played nearby. Once in position, it wasn’t long before the national anthem was sung and the doves released. I’m not kidding. The gun fired and (3 minutes later) we were off. This is the point when you wonder how you got yourself into this again. Too late though, there’s only one way back home. Start running.

For the first couple of miles it was hard to settle into anything, and walk breaking was difficult for fear of being run down. But we did it. Patty took charge of calling ‘5 seconds’. In 5 seconds we’d try to find some road shoulder to walk on. Way before 60 seconds we were itching to start running. But we held steady. Slow now will get us there faster later. Don’t worry about the people running by. Stay on the plan.

We ran through redwoods towards the coast. Some kids were out now to watch us and the sun was out. It was already in the mid-60s and I’d started in just shorts and a t-shirt and never even begun to feel cold. I had a moment of thinking that was a little bad, but perhaps that should have worried me more. It was going to be hot. For now, it was perfect running, looking at the trees and the little streams and campgrounds or two nestled down in between trees. And the running was easy too, so life was good. But hold steady. Our pace settled into an 11:01-11:03 average. Perfectly on plan.

By mile 6 we’d cleared the trees and headed straight towards the coast and the Big Sur lighthouse perched atop a piece of marooned coastline. From there we curved north and started up along the coast. The road climbed slowly past cow fields with the Pacific ocean behind them. Cresting the hill we headed down to sea level and then onto the big climb: Hurricane Point. This hill was approximately 600ft up over 2 miles. It’s work, but it’s very doable and never gets too steep. Both of us felt strong the whole way up. At the top we stopped and posed for pictures (in hurricane force wind), the view was spectacular. People headed up the hill behind us, a trail of runners stretching along the coast in front of us.

Then started our way down. Easy on the quads. Easy. Easy. Easy. At the bottom was the famed bridge that is seen in many photos of the area. It was also 13.1 miles, halfway there. As we ran across the bridge a man was playing a baby grand piano.

Behind Patty the ocean was a deep deep blue. “This is Californian living,” said Patty, “this is why you moved here.” It was magical. And it was living.

We continued on. The next major hill I came too was the first sign of fatigue onset. It wasn’t too bad, but the climb up the Big Bad Boy had taken something out of me that I wasn’t going to get back before the end of the race. It was only going to get worse. The course became a fairly steady stream of climbing and dropping with little which you’d consider flat. Where there were hills, which is to say, everywhere, they had no name, but were still the equal of any heart break hill elsewhere. It was hard running. By mile 18 I was getting tired and my legs and I were having conversations. Our pace average had taken a hit on the big hill (with one mile in there taking 13 minutes), partially recovered on the following downhill (ran some nice sub-10 sections in there) and stabilized at about a 11:12 pace. All in all, the race to mile 20 was pretty good. Why don’t they make races 20 miles long?

I remember at the San Francisco marathon a pace group leader giving the following assessment of running a marathon: run the first 10 with your head (be smart, don’t go too hard), run the second 10 with your legs (it will get harder, use you legs to hold the pace), and run the last 6.2 with your heart. Not long after mile 20 I knew where she was coming from.

Around me the scenery was only more spectacular. Cliff sides we ran along were covered with flowers and dropped spectacularly into intimate little coves that you’d never see from a car. Sea gulls would soar by us against clear blue sky, while a we ran by a musician playing the harp. This is 80 or 90% of the experience of running Big Sur. The beauty of Big Sur far outweighs the challenge. And the two experiences become separate. While your legs can be saying lets stop. We’re done. Your mind can be saying “Hell no, this is living. Let’s keep going. This is fun.”

By mile 23 I was hurting on the uphills. I was tired, there wasn’t too much glycogen left, but largely it was this: I was very dehydrated. My HR was high and I unable to keep it down on the hills. Patty, we need to do 1 minute run, 1 minute walk, okay? What? My HR is 195! You know, like, as though I was sprinting the final 400 yards of a 5k, only we’re doing a 12 min/mile up a hill and there’s still 2 miles to go. I don’t want to blow up here. So we walk-ran up the last few hills and cruised down the final downhills. They still felt good.

Soon we crossed the Carmel bridge and headed into the finish line. People cheered. It was amazing. A life moment. Our chip time was 4 hours, 57 minutes. A 10 minute PR for the two of us.

One of the organizers shook my hand as he placed the hand crafted medal around my neck. “How was it?” he asked with such sincerity. “It was hard” I said. But I felt like it wasn’t a very good answer to his question. It was a momentous spiritual journey that I’ll never forget. And it was hard.

CONCLUSIONS

Well, I’m still digesting this. The race itself was a perfect race for me. We beat our expectations on all levels. Our second half was less than three minutes slower than the first half (and some of that was picture taking). Not quite Bart’s negative split, but I’ll take it.

But there were things to learn from it, as always. Here are some initial thoughts:

Water. Hydration was the big issue. By the time we finished it was in the high 80s. Under those conditions I know I need a lot of water. It seems likely I need more water than I can reasonably take in at an aid station. I either need to practice that, or I need to run with a bottle like I do in training. And then I need to think about sodium intake.

Food. The 100 calories (1 gel) every 45 minutes worked well.

Knees. My knee is still a problem, but my PT and I are working on that. After the race I had someone at the medical tent tape ice onto it. It was borderline annoying during the race approaching ‘pain’ in the final few miles. Ugly afterwards. Back to those exercises.

Walk/Run. This was the brave experiment of this marathon, and I think it works. It doesn’t sit right with me, but at this time and this place it made for a much better (and faster marathon). Being a slave to a watch is not fun either, but being in control of the outcome of your race is. Like they say: walk before you’re forced to.

Hills. Good technique down hills worked really well. The final hill we ran down was our fastest. After 5 hours our quads were still going strong (not as good today!) Something to take forward. We can always be stronger running up hills, but all our trail running certainly helped. We’ll get stronger.

All in all, we had a fantastic time. I haven’t even mentioned how well organized this is too. Everything was perfect for every aspect of this event. Like the half we ran last November this is a class act.

Big Sur, Marathons, Race reports, Running

Yesterday we completed our first marathon. Patty and I crossed the finish line together in 5 hours and 8 minutes. What a weekend!

Expo

After collecting our race packet Friday, we returned to the expo site Saturday to watch some of the talks. There was a crazy mix of people presenting, including the race medical chief telling a room full of people that they didn’t need to eat before or during the race. The highlight was seeing ultra marathoner Dean Karnazes talk. He was funny and inspiring.

I also managed to meet up with a couple of Internet friends: Steve from the Hal Higdon v-team message boards and Mary who lives in Florida and has been blogging about her marathon training since March.

We went home and ignored the race medical chief and had a big plate of pasta.

The race

We were awake and up by 3:30am. I downed a cup of coffee, drank a last glass of water and ate a granola bar and yogurt (sticking to my standard pre-run breakfast). By 4:30am we were out the door and driving across the bridge. We were beyond ready to go by this stage, no room to feel tired from the early wake up.

We made it over to SF and parked fairly close to the start/finish. People were emptying out of their cars, attaching timing chips to shoes, bibs to shirts, jogging around. We used the potties and ran into one of Kelly’s teachers two people in front of us in the line. We walked over to the start line and watched the first wave go off, joined the potty line again, and had basically the perfect amount of time to join our wave, find our pace leader, before we were off.

We decided we’d join the 4:30 pace group. Not because we planned to run 4:30, but because we didn’t want to start faster than this. It was fun running with them for a little while, easy running, but staying with a pace group would be hard for the whole race. At the first aid station we slowed, grabbed a couple of cups of water and looked up to see her halfway up the Fort Mason hill! We couldn’t believe we were blown away by her so fast through the first aid station so we ran a 9:37 mile to catch her. At the end of Crissy field the same thing happened again and by the time we sighted her she was halfway up to the bridge. We blew her a kiss goodbye, we were on our own.

Up on the bridge it was very foggy. A refreshing wet wind blew through the gate. No view, but it was better to have it cool. The running was at it’s most congested here and the walkers who didn’t move to the right drove us a little crazy. Really, do they think running 3 across and then coming to a relative halt is helpful to the thousands of people coming up behind them? Half way across I heard “Go Patty! Go Peter!”. It was Mary, who’d caught up with us. She was more or less naked (sports bra and skorts). We stayed with her for much of the rest of the bridge and then she was gone.

Also interesting about the bridge was that my IT band started to act up. This is Patty’s designated problem and I haven’t had any problems with mine in all the training runs. Oh well, if there’s one thing we mentally practiced during our training, it was that anything could happen and we’d take it and deal with it.

From there we headed south to the park. We were keeping roughly a 10:30 pace for much of this time. This section was underrated for hills. They are not steep, but they wear you down then you’re not paying attention to them. We started to walk one minute every mile too, realizing that we had a long way to go. During this period my foot started to hurt again. Slowly, each mile, it got worse and worse. I knew it would come at some point during the race, but I had hoped for later rather than sooner.

We passed the half marathon mark in 2:20, almost a half PR! I’m looking forward to running another half some time soon and see what I can do when I don’t have another 13 miles to run. But back to the business at hand.

The course soon headed back up the park from near ocean beach. This section was where we dived. It’s hard to say where ‘The Wall’ was, but for us this was it. Our pace dropped a minute or two a mile with the long long uphill and never rebounded. My foot hurt. My knee hurt (IT). My hips hurt. And generally, as far as my body went, things were all downhill from around mile 15 or 16.

Around Stowe Lake was one of the low points. We weren’t moving towards the finish line, just going around in a circle and my foot was now so troubled that I seriously was considering the nearby half marathon return buses. This is the only point where I started to doubt things. Then something happened. I don’t medically know what went on, but around mile 18 the buildup of pain all of a sudden gave way and there was a feeling of having something very cold poured on it, followed by a slightly mushy feeling and dull pain. I could almost feel the internal bleeding. Yikes! But the good news was that it was then much easier to run!

From the park we re-entered the city and ran down the middle of Haight street. This was a highlight of the race and the energy coming from the spectators there gave me a big lift. Mile 20, a point I was looking forward to (and dreading) came and went without us spotting the marker. We ran across Market street and I knew then I’d make it. Finishing sub-5 hours now seemed doubtful, so it was just a matter of getting it done.

This was a much more industrial area of old rundown buildings and bikies mixing the tunes for the runners under freeway overpasses. To be honest, I didn’t care for the music by this point, but every spectator gave me lift. One had a sign for “Patty” and yelled “Hey, a Patty. Hey, we made a sign for you!” They put a smile on my face and really helped to keep me going.

But in general those were tough miles for us and there’s some take home lessons there. Like have a slow walk-run backup plan for when/if the wheels fall off, don’t just start walking with no plan to start running again. We didn’t have too many clear thoughts in there.

By the final two miles I regained my focus and actually felt good and strong. The “dog patch” area was the turning point where the course turned to face the ball park and the Bay Bridge. The effect of seeing where the finish line was overcame everything else. I was ready to run the rest but Patty wanted to walk more because of the old IT knee thing.

We passed AT&T park, with a game about to start, there were people everywhere, but we were a secondary attraction to some guy called Barry Bonds I suppose. Rounding the park was the 26 mile mark and the finish line was in sight. I picked up my pace with what I had left and ran strong across the line.

The aftermath

My foot is now a mess. A red-blue bruise now covers half the side of my foot. And of course much of my lower half will take some recovery time.

All in all, we’re really happy. When I hurt my foot 5 weeks ago I thought that’s it, no marathon this time. Then I got some more running in and hurt my foot again. Again that was it. But I cross trained like a crazy person and did make it to the start line.

I wanted the experience and was willing to take a cost. I felt like even if I dropped, I would still learn things for the next one. So I did all that. As a bonus, I finished.

Physically, this race was a serious challenge. But I never stopped enjoying being out there and being in the event. Even in the final miles I knew it wasn’t going to be the last. I wasn’t saying to myself “how did I get myself into this thing?” like I probably should have been.

Was running my first marathon a defining moment in my life? Unfortunately not in the way I thought it might be. It was almost anti-climatic. But it really was living life and that’s what it’s all about.

We’re already deciding what’s next, but first I need to see about that foot.

Marathons, Race reports, Running