San Francisco Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

Instead of a gunshot, they start the race with a cowbell. It takes about 45 seconds for me to reach the start line (it would take DW nearly 5 minutes to reach the start line). I start my Garmin. With such a big crowd, it took a little while for everyone to space out enough to run comfortably. It’s so easy to get swept up into the crowds at these larger races. It’s doubly deceiving because I’m feeling relatively strong at the start. I started off at what seemed like a reasonably comfortable pace (although as it turns out I started out faster than I probably should have). I’m already falling behind my fellow alum. He’s got long legs and I don’t really have the speed so I just run at my pace.

For the first couple miles, I’m still warming up and my left shin is tight as it is wont to do at the start of a run. There are quite a few people passing me. I don’t know if this is because they are just plain faster than I am, they are going out too fast, or because I am slowing. As we make the turnaround at the end of the panhandle, I can barely see my fellow alum off in the distance.

For the next few miles, I hold my own. First water/Gatorade stop is at 3 miles. We continue to wind back through the park and come out of the park and turn onto Great Highway along Ocean Beach.

I’ve seen this view so many times, but it’s still a treat to catch a glimpse of the beach for that moment which momentarily takes me out of my exertion. After that it’s all business after that since I only pay attention to the road and the runners before me.

At about , 6 miles I’m feeling a bit tired, probably from the training and racing in the previous two weeks. At about mile 7, my legs are feeling loose (finally) and my stride becomes loose and easy. I’m starting to pass some folks. This is usually the way it works for me – I definitely don’t have the top speed of many others, but I can maintain my pace fairly consistently late into the race so as others fade, I begin to pass them.

I know that the course goes along Great Highway past Sloat (where I usually turn around on a run) before turning around to come back. Since this stretch is an out and back course, we’re able to see the race leaders come by us on their way back. They are flying. It’s amazing to think how fast they are compared to us mere mortals.

At around mile 8 or 9, I look forward a bit and realize I’ve almost caught up to my fellow alum; he’s about 50 feet ahead of me. I’m pretty sure I’m keeping pace, which likely means he’s slowed. I shout some words of encouragement to him as I pass, but I know unless he picks up his pace, he won’t make his goal of 1:40. I keep going and run to the turnaround point and start heading back.

With about 3 miles to go, I turn up my speed a bit and I have to focus on my breathing to keep the oxygen supply coming steadily. I’m passing a good number of people, but I reach a point where I can’t pass anyone and I may have surged a little early. I just hang on for the next mile. I pick it up again. I wait until we’ve made the turn back into the park. Uphill…ugh. I push myself a bit more. I’m passing quite a few people, many who appear to have slowed quite a bit so close to the end. As I hear people start to say that the finish is around the last turn, I begin to pick it up again and pass some more. I make the final turn and, mercifully, it’s a short downhill stretch to the finish. I’m sprinting and finish at full speed. I’m into the finish chute and the runner in front of me basically stopped and I basically run into him, but we’re both okay. This race was timed old school, w/o chips so we had to walk our way through the chute to give the tear off part of the bottom of our bibs to the folks at the end of the chute.

Because I was so focused on my sprint, I didn’t even see the finish clock. I forgot to stop my watch right away after finishing (maybe 5 seconds after I finished), but it showed 1:39:54.

Time: 1:40:34 official time (7:40 pace). 1:39:54 watch time, probably 1:39:49 for actual running time.
Rank: 788/4732 overall, 642/2416 Men, 118/461 M35-39

My mile splits as extracted from my Garmin are below. I think I started off a little faster than I should have. Mile 11 spit is a bit anomalous, but it’s possible with the fatigue at that point and a bit of a mental lapse. I was happy with the strong finish.
1 0:07:22
2 0:07:19
3 0:07:50
4 0:07:56
5 0:07:49
6 0:07:41
7 0:07:32
8 0:07:37
9 0:07:29
10 0:07:24
11 0:08:24
12 0:07:31
13 0:07:17

I pretty much raced exactly as I expected (I wanted to basically replicate my time in Cabo). I can look at it either I was 35 seconds over my cabo time f I use the official results or I PR’d it based on actual running time. In either case, I met my goal for this race.

I was a little tired going into this race. DW and I raced a half marathon two weeks ago in Cabo San Lucas. One week after that race, I was mostly recovered and had most of my legs speed/strength back and so I did a fairly hard 12 mile run over the weekend. The Friday before this race, I did my usual 6 mile run around the neighborhood and strangely, my legs were even a bit sore on Saturday, the day before this race. I did at least take Saturday off. Not exactly a real taper for a half mary race, but I’ve been trying to use my non-A races as training and to mostly train through these races.

Cool down
Right after the finish, I chatted with some of the tri peeps. I drank some water and stretched some. I walked into the very crowded expo area. I grabbed a race bag and ate the mini-clif bar in it. I picked up my t-shirt (long sleeve, nice). I grabbed some bananas. I stopped by the Kaiser booth to see if there were any BTers there, but couldn’t really tell. I was getting cold so I went on to the sweat pickup which was at the far end of the expo. I put on my jacket and pants. I grabbed DWs sweat bag (sweat bags were just laid out on the street unattended).

Like a spawning salmon, I had to work my way back upstream so I could get back to the finish line to watch and cheer on DW as she finished. I stretched some more and drank water as I waited for her. After a little bit, she came around the final corner and I screamed out to her, but she was in the zone. I was able to snap a picture of her. I met her at the finish. We walked through the expo briefly and stretched some more.

Post Race
The sun was out and it was a pleasant walk back along Ocean Beach to get back to our car. There were runners still finishing up and it appeared to be mostly TnT folks. We stopped briefly to take a couple pictures.

We stopped of at Mollie Stone’s on the way home and bought some spicy shrimp sushi, two kinds of hummus and some whole wheat pita bread, and a small organic ready made mushroom pizza to eat for lunch at home. After lunch, we took a nap (one of my favorite post-workout activities) and later watched the game. It was a great day!