Race: The San Francisco Marathon (Half-Marathon)
Date: July 26th, 2009
Location: San Francisco, California
Notes:
What can I say, this race kicked my arse! The first few miles were mellow and flat. By the time you’re warmed up (and it was a nice nippy/chilly morning), the first steep climb greets you, or rather, smacks you in the face! Never have I, in all the races I’ve ran, encountered such a steep incline. This was around mile 5. So the climb started with a really steep grade and it kind of levelled off but you were still climbing and felt the burn on your quads. The funny thing was, they had these signs posted on the side of the road. Like, trivia questions that the race organizers put up to read as you ran past them. It was really funny that I had to take photos of it (please forgive the quality of these photos as they were taken with my mobile)!
Clever little monkeys! I actually felt better after taking a snapshot of those signs whilst attempting to climb the hill. I should mention that I did my Zone 3 HR pace in the beginning and I’m glad I did because I felt like I really attacked the first steep incline and the rest of the climb until reaching the Golden Gate Bridge.
Oh yes, this was one of the highlights of the race — running through (and back) the Golden Gate Bridge. I have to admit, though, the novelty of running on the GGB died 5 minutes into it! LOL. The effing thing won’t end! It was the most cramped section of the race as the incoming (us) and returning (them) runners shared one lane of the road. That meant that the silly people with their pace group who were running 5-abreast pretty much took the entire incoming lane and the returning lane was relegated to having to run a narrower section (3 to 4 abreast, it seemed). Still, it was a great run though a bit daunting when you would hit these metal bridge braces or summat (they were rather slippery!) and because the fog hadn’t lifted yet, you couldn’t really see where the turn around was. I got a few pics of that section as well:
The last photo in the series above was taken when I finally turned around. By that time, there were less people coming to so they decided to make the returning section larger. By the time I got to the end of the Bridge, they removed the incoming lane and had the slower runners run on the bridge’s sidewalk.
I have to note that I made up about 2 minutes by running with this 5:15 marathon pace group on the way back on the Bridge. I caught sight of them half-way back on the Golden Gate Bridge and decided that they were running a pace I could keep up with (it was about 10:30 min/mile – 10:45 min/mile.) I’m glad I did because I felt so good afterwards having made up that time. I only lost them when they were going up the second long-arse hill but actually passed them during this long windy descent! I was a bit scared about that I was going to fast (about 9:30 min/mile pace) and that I would somehow slip because the ground was still wet but I kept my balance and made up another minute or two and was back on track to finish within my 2:45 goal (it wasn’t a PR but it’s close enough to an acceptable finish!)
Officially, I finished with a time of 2:45:13; again, not a personal record but considering the hills, I’m happy with it and it’s still one second better than my first ever half marathon 🙂
Garmin and Nike+iPod had trouble logging my steps because of the hills, I guess but click on them to see my stats anyway (on the Garmin Connect website, look between mile 10 and 12 — you’ll see a bowl/dip in that indicating my pace got quicker — that was the downhill run!)
I now leave you with a parting shot of my post-race dessert and what I had for supper that day:
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