The Whooshing Sound

This past Sun­day, I did the first half of the San Fran­cisco Marathon with Aaron L. (Andrew M, Eric G, Ian R, and Stacey F did the full marathon.) Look­ing back, I’m still pretty amazed that I fin­ished, let alone at a decent time. My offi­cial time was 2:39:13, or a 12:09/mile pace! (If you want to see me at the fin­ish line, go here and search my bib num­ber, 62,423. Sorry I couldn’t find a way to rip the video and make it more convenient.)

The title of the post comes from this quote:

“I love dead­lines. I like the whoosh­ing sound they make as they fly by.” — Dou­glas Adams.

And that’s pretty much the approach I took to my training.

You see, the idea to sign up for this crazy thing started back at the begin­ning of the year, when Joe M and Sang D were still liv­ing in the same house as me, and the three of us would go on runs every night. I got up to about 6 mile runs at around a 10:00/mile pace, and was pretty excited about it. Aaron L had been run­ning in Davis and then back at home in Santa Cruz, so we chal­lenged our­selves to do a half marathon. SF was close for both of us and scenic, so we signed up for that. We were both pretty excited. Aaron L seemed more excited about his bar-​hopping plans imme­di­ately after the race, though.

Like it often does, though, life got in the way of plans. Sophia Chew (and her ten­ants, Joe M, Sang D, and me) moved to a new place, and the neigh­bor­hood wasn’t as nice, and Joe M and Sang D moved away, and I got busy with work and APhiO and lost moti­va­tion. Aaron L had to deal with per­pet­ual sick­ness and study­ing for the New York Bar.

Two weeks before the race, I took time off to go to Min­nesota and visit my fam­ily. I brought my run­ning shoes and told myself I would train every morn­ing up there. The first day there, though, I went out to the play­ground to play with my cousins and hurt my knee. Com­pletely slacked the rest of the first week. The sec­ond week, I did runs of 2, 4, and 8 miles, then went back to 2 miles for the rest of the week to let my feet recover from some blis­ters that had formed. I started at around 12:45 and moved into the 13:30/mile pac­ing dur­ing my practice.

I came back to Cal­i­for­nia and drove out to SF on Sat­ur­day, pretty damn ner­vous about my lack of train­ing. Did the math, and I real­ized I would need to keep a 15:00/mile pace to keep ahead of course clo­sure. (I was in Wave 6, and Wave 8, which started 20 min­utes after me, had 3 hours to fin­ish or else the course would be closed in front of them, and they would have to move to the side­walk to fin­ish.) I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it, since my prac­tices never went past 8 miles, and I didn’t know how my endurance would hold up. I also didn’t know how I would han­dle the hills.

Talked it over with Aaron L, and he shared my con­cerns about a lack of prac­tice and we agreed that we would just do as much as we could, and if noth­ing else, we could enjoy a nice break­fast on North Beach.

Sun­day morn­ing came around, and we wan­dered out to the Embar­cadero to start. Eas­ily made it all the way around Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach. Aaron L real­ized we were run­ning at a 9:00/mile pace, so we decided to walk all the uphills, which was a good deci­sion on the big one lead­ing up to the Golden Gate Bridge. On the bridge itself, I strug­gled a lit­tle at first, but caught a sec­ond wind and really enjoyed a sweet spot, although that came at the expense of tun­nel vision and get­ting sep­a­rated from Aaron L. I had some more trou­ble on the hills right after the bridge, but stuck to our solid strat­egy of walk­ing up the hills. Around mile 11 or so, after the last water sta­tion, I was really hav­ing some trou­ble. My legs felt like they were under­wa­ter, and it was get­ting hard to lift them and keep my strides up. Switched back and forth between jog­ging and power-​walking, but I even­tu­ally made it to the fin­ish line, where Dong Ha and Aaron L were wait­ing for me.

When I stopped after­wards and downed a whole bot­tle of water that was handed to me, I real­ized that my lower body was wooden and heavy, and my upper body was numb and tin­gling. Even my tongue tin­gled as I drank the water! Had some hot tea and a banana, which helped a lot. Stretched (but not nearly enough, because I was too sore to move for a solid day) as we waited for the shut­tles to take us back to the start­ing line.

Now Aaron L and I are talk­ing about doing a full marathon next year. Maybe I’ll even train prop­erly this time!

Tags: Aaron L, Andrew M, Dong Ha, Drew M, Family, Ian R, Joe M, Ron L, Sang D, Sophia Chew, Stacey F, Work