Considering the "Australian Walkabout" and the subsequent "broken hand incident and recovery", my expectations for racing this year were pretty low. A friend asked me when I came back if I wanted to throw our names in the lottery for the Nike 1/2 in San Fran and for some reason, I said "sure, why not?"
Yes, you get a Tiffany necklace at the end instead of a finisher's medal, and it is handed to you by a very handsome member of the SF Fire Department. BUT there are hills. And they are steep. Oh, the course is congested because 30,000+ people get accepted into this race. I thought that we are never getting in. Until. of course, we did in late June. OK, time to get real about training.
Training was going pretty well thanks to TN until late September when a cold/sore throat came and still hasn't completely left. This impacted some of my training so Coach and I made a call to make Nike SF a "training run" and use a local race the following week as my "A" race.
Thank goodness I met up with one friend running the race the day before as she informed me that the race started at 6:30am, not 7am. OK, now that would have sucked. But yeah, early start. Got up at 5am so I could chow a Kind bar and drink a bit of water. Always helpful being a 1/3 of a mile from the start. Easy walk over. Bit cool and dark since race started at 630am. Took a gel 5 mins before go time, sipped some water, etc. Had 2 water bottles with me, and the plan was to meet Marc at mile 7 for 2 more bottles. Had 3 more gels with me.
I've never not raced a race (double negative, I know) before, so I was curious to see how I would rise to this challenge. The goal was to run it, stay in z2 and work on some fueling, tactics, etc. Be conservative in those 1st 7 miles, recover on the downhills and don't skimp on the fueling. As a side note, when people asked me my goal, I said that if I got in under 1:55 that I would be ecstatic but 2 hours would be a solid effort. This is not a PR course by any stretch so getting that expectation out of my head was helpful.
CP and I started slow. It's a mob scene with 30000 other runners and the whole Team in Training thing makes things worse since they let slower runners go first. But we tried to stay conservative and not weave in/out. I made a conscious decision to go on feel, so I did not check my HR. 1st 4 miles were pretty easy. A couple of spurts here and there based on little climbs, etc. My splits seemed reasonable.
At the end of mile 4, CP slowed down as she had a plantar issue and I pressed on. Mile 5 was a bit quick since there was some subtle downhill, but I didn't feel like I pushed harder. Just tried to maintain effort. Popped in a gel a 30 minutes to prep for the hill.
At mile 5.84, the big climb started. Yes, I took note because I knew it was a mile of straight uphill. With about a 1/2 mile left of the climb, I started to walk a little. Popped in a gel. I tried not to pay attention to pace on the hill. CP caught me and I dropped her off with Marc, got 2 more bottles and went on. BTW it was foggy and the weather was really perfect for racing.
I got over the hill and saw my split was 9:55. I was pretty happy about that. To get through that with a walk break under 10 minutes was pretty darned good. I saw plenty of people going crazy on the downhill and thought "suckers".... they are going to get crushed in about 10 minutes. Yep, passed them later on. That advice about using the downhill to recover just like we practiced in track really paid off. I used the down time to start doing the math on getting in under 2 hours. Before I knew it, it was time to climb again through the rollers in a gorgeous neighborhood known as Sea Cliff.
I kept pushing and again, on the final big hill, I took a walk break and popped in my final gel. Again back to the downhill, more steep, but I kept it under control. A tiny bit faster than the last one since the next uphill wasn't too bad, etc. Sub 2 was definitely doable if I pushed a little on the next uphill. I knew I could pick off people in miles 11-12 as people were going to be tired, displeased about a subtle yet annoying hill and their legs were going to be pissed off from going nuts on the downhill. The last mile is mostly downhill, and I went in seeing if I could get in at 1:57. Ultimately, my calves cramped up at 12.5 so I just tried to remain steady and finish strong. I did that. I felt good from a cardio perspective in the last 3 miles, which I imagine was a result of the conservative 1st half and not being stupid on the downhills.
Official time: 1:58:19 -- a 14+ minute improvement from when I did this same race (same course) in 2008. Not bad for a tune-up race. And I placed pretty well. Hit 5% in my age group and 7% overall. Not bad, Beck.
And now I get to do it all over again in 6 days. Stretching will be my mantra this week.