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!

Yes­ter­day…

Man, my mind can’t take it any­more. Woke up at 5:30 because Peggy S was sick, so I cov­ered her chalk­ing shift. Alice C picked Drew M and me up at 5:45 and we were off. First, dropped Drew M off at Kinko’s. He had to print out fly­ers for Ser­vice Fair. Then we went on cam­pus and met up with Bethany W, Jimmy P, Jane L, Liz S, and Sang D for the project. We split up, and Alice C and I took Liz S and hit up Soc Sci, Young, and Olson. Got caught up there, and Bethany W met up again with us there after her crew fin­ished up their side of cam­pus and she sent them home. After the project, Bethany W and Alice C went to Baker’s Square for break­fast, but I went home to pass out.

Woke up again at 10, which is when my first class started. I thought I could sleep for a bit and get ready for my sec­ond class, since the first class’ lec­tures are recorded and put online any­way, so I could just down­load it later. Then I got caught up online with ser­vice and some other stuff like writ­ing a post for my awe­some read­ers, so I missed the bus that would get to school by 12, too. More online stuff, and Peggy S made dumplings for lunch, which I mooched.

Even­tu­ally, I did catch the bus, and went to cam­pus for Ser­viceComm. Too bad no one showed up for it. I talked to a cou­ple folks infor­mally about what we wanted to do, and asked peo­ple what they wanted out of ser­vice, but not much came out of it. Sat around for a while eat­ing fun-size Laffy Taffies and read­ing the lame jokes to each other off the wrap­pers. Quote comes from one of them.

Yeah, here’s the two jokes on my wrap­per: “What do pigs put on their cuts?” “Oink­ment.” “Why did the ghost sing off-key?” “Because he left his sheet music at home.” Har-dee-har-har.

Went to Peggy S’s Non-Verbal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion class after her with that. It’s really inter­est­ing stuff. Sandy L’s in that class, too, and the pro­fes­sor always makes Korean ref­er­ences — we think his wife must be Korean — which we check with her for accu­racy. I left at the break, though, to go to ExComm, which was just out­side, because Peggy S’s class is in the same room as the gen­eral meet­ing. ExComm was pretty smooth, and after that was class time again.

Lec­ture was pretty cool, we saw some videos today illus­trat­ing the dif­fer­ent approaches to the treat­ment of men­tal ill­ness fea­tur­ing Carl Rogers and Albert Ellis.

After class, caught the bus home with Peggy S, and ran into Andrew M, Emily T, and Mabel H on it. We all sat in the very back like cool kids. When we got home, drove to Mur­der Burger for din­ner. Two Aggie Anni­hi­la­tors for $10.71 is a great deal, but the food in gen­eral is going down­hill. The burg­ers aren’t as tasty, the fries are sog­gier, and they don’t have that great BBQ sauce they had before. Food coma after that.