The San Francisco Marathon on Sunday was the culmination of the training group I had been running with for the past several months. By and large, the athletes had great, though painful, experiences and all had accomplished their goal of finishing a full marathon, for most it was their first. My wife took some great photos of the start and finish for the 2nd half marathon (I'm in the green shirt).
At the risk of sounding like a stick in the mud, I did not have a great race. While I had trained for the full 26.2 mile race, I had chosen to run the 2nd half marathon, with the goal of a sub-90 minute race. My PR (94:50) was from the Carlsbad Half Marathon 2.5 years ago while I was training for the Napa Valley Marathon. I went out on pace with Richard, the pacer for a 90 minute race pace, but quickly realized (about a mile or so in) that I wouldn't be able to maintain it.
(photo by: sn00py78)
I slowed down a tad and re-adjusted my goal to a "simple" PR. 92 or 93 minutes sounded decent and I felt I could manage. In the back of my mind, though, I feared the signals my legs and abdomen were sending foreshadowed a horrific finish. The next few miles was a gradual climb, so I settled into a comfortable pace hoping to make up some time on the upcoming downhill.
My daughter was waiting for me at mile 8, which gave me a psychological boost and helped propel me down the next mile or so through the Mission. But, the looming hill on 16th & Bryant proved to be the beginning of the end. As I had mentioned before, my abdomen was cramping up and I needed to eat at this point. I tried sucking down a GU packet while I ran, but my throat wouldn't cooperate. I stopped at the next aid station and was finally able to convince my body that it needed the food (and Cytomax and water). If you've ever stopped in a race, you understand how difficult it is to start running again.
(photo by: sn00py78)The last four miles was psychological warfare. My brain had to promise my body that it would only run for a minute or two so that it would agree to get going again. Of course, that was a manipulative lie. After a couple of minutes my body tried to revolt by stopping, but my brain said, "just one more minute". And that is how the last 30 minutes of the race played out. (Luckily, my brain and my body were able to reconcile after plenty of recovery.)
In the end, I had a watch time of 99:48 and a chip time of 98:51--the first time my watch had a slower time than the chip. Looking back, my biggest mistakes were:
- Setting too aggressive a goal time with no recent races to back it up. I hadn't run a race since May and my track workouts had been spotty to say the least. Shooting for a PR in the first place would have prevented me from going out much faster than I knew I could and would have been more achievable.
- Sharing my "dream" goal with everyone. Typically, I like to set a couple of goal times going into a race. They tend to be (1) finish the race, (2) finish the race strong the whole way, (3) finish with a PR, and (4) finish with some amazing dream time that my body may not be capable of. When people ask me what my goal is before the race, I'll usually respond with either goal 2 or goal 3. However, this time, I responded with goal 4, the 90-minute race. This effectively commits me to trying to achieve this time at the expense of the other goals. Had I not share the dream goal, I may have re-adjusted my goal to goal 3 on race morning.
- Not taking in enough fuel. This has always been a problem I've had with racing longer than 12k. At a certain point I need to take in water, electrolyte, and carbs, but if I'm pushing myself close to my threshold pace, my stomach doesn't have the blood available to digest anything. I ate my pre-race oatmeal about 90 minutes before the start, but I should have had a GU about 10 minutes before.
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