Dinhternet

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!

Unfor­tu­nately, the first part of my video from the top of Half-Dome got messed up, and that’s the one with me show­ing off the view from the top. Here’s the sec­ond part:

My first time using this cam­era. The video qual­ity is pretty awe­some, but I need to fig­ure out why the first part didn’t work right. Also, you can really tell that this is a helmet-cam, because I’m the only one you can hear clearly.

Other than that, though… Half-Dome was awesome!

It took us a gru­el­ing 14 hours to hike the slightly more than 14 miles round-trip, but I had a lot of fun doing it, mostly thanks to Aaron L, Alex K, Derek N, Han C, Jef­frey K, Mai­lyne N, Ray­mond L, Regina S, and Wei-Wen C. (Oh, and sur­prise meet­ing with KS Tiffany H at the summit!)

Even though not the best-planned trip, every­thing just kinda worked out amaz­ingly well. Because of the odd weather this year, Mist Trail was EXTRA wet and the falls were just spec­tac­u­lar. I thought that the cables had been put up a cou­ple of weeks ear­lier, but it turns out they were not up until the day before our hike (June 16th), so we were among the first to see the top this year. In fact, there was still snow on top, which was awe­some! We had a lit­tle snow­ball fight at the clear­ing before the steps. Oh, and we ended up not pay­ing park­ing fees because the ranger sta­tions were closed as we entered and exited the park.

My only com­plaint was about the wait at the cables. Next time, I’m def­i­nitely going on the out­side of them and skip past the slower folks.

I can’t wait for my next adventure!

It’s odd how most week­ends, I have absolutely noth­ing to do, and then comes along a per­fect storm of invitations.

Besides being Easter week­end — which doesn’t directly impact me, but I thought it would reduce the num­ber of things going on, since other peo­ple have fam­ily events — there was pledge retreat, Clint S vis­it­ing Cal­i­for­nia, Genie L’s/Cathy K’s/Stevie D’s “Appre­ci­a­tion Din­ner,” gam­ing with Isaac L’s Berke­ley crew, and snow­board­ing with my sister.

The orig­i­nal plan was to head down to Santa Cruz, hang out with some old peo­ple and hit up pledge retreat, wan­der up to Berke­ley to hang with Clint S and maybe say hi to Isaac L’s crew. (Sorry, Genie L, but I thought your din­ner was another week­end under I saw the event on Face­book while I was at Aaron L’s place.)

I had some car trou­ble a cou­ple of weeks ago and took it in to a mechanic in Davis. They fixed my coolant leak by replac­ing the water pump. How­ever, my car started slightly over­heat­ing as I went over the hill into Santa Cruz. Things were OK while at retreat, and I topped off my coolant before head­ing back over the hill on Sat­ur­day. How­ever, the tem­per­a­ture nee­dle was hov­er­ing a lit­tle above the halfway point of the gauge, def­i­nitely higher than nor­mal, and as I got into San Jose, the Check Engine Light turned on.

As I came up to the free­way inter­changes, I was faced with the choice of fun or safety. I really wish I could have made the other choices, but I headed to Davis, where my mechanic is. And I just found out this morn­ing that he’s not open on week­ends. (Of course, it’s Easter Sun­day, so it would have been a long shot anyway.)

So any­way, sorry to every­one I couldn’t meet up with this weekend!