Finally, two weeks later, I'll attempt to write up some semblance of a race report for you, my lovely readers.
Night before:
Dinner, around 6:30pm. Tri-colored rigatoni with tomato sauce and turkey meatballs. Generic green salad. Water. Pretty much the same thing I ate before both my 22 milers. I figured it was safe.
Also, confirmed that I had a ride to the race. Sweeeeeet! Thank you to DN and JK!
Morning of:
Peanut butter & jelly. Bathroom. Water. My wonderful race shirt and the promises of weather that is overcast and 60 degrees. I love San Francisco.
JK overslept and they're going to be late to get me. Uh-oh. Usually I spend a good amount of time waiting in line to use the port-a-potties multiple times. This wasn't going to happen today.
I'm waiting out in the street and I get C3PO, my Garmin all connected to the GPS satellites. I was very excited to be using my new toy for the race. C3PO is set up to give me: average pace, instantaneous pace, time and distance.
Get to the race start, drop off sweats, hit the bathroom one last time. Find my tri club friends - we all trained together with the 9:00 min/mile group and are going to start off together.
The race:
The gun goes off and we shuffle off to the starting line. Then weave our way through the crowds. My friends knew that I'd start off a wee bit on the fast side, but I did manage to keep it to a decent 8:30min/mile-ish pace. My friend AM started off a little earlier than me and she was the first one to cheer me on, once we got to the Embarcadero!
Eventually, the whole group was all together again and we stuck together for a while. Somewhere in the outer Richmond, I had cheerleaders BF and HW find me :) Apparently, my Obama shirt was a nice tip-off to them that I was nearby. My ears weren't burning, but I guess my shirt was getting a lot of comments from the crowd!
Around mile 10 I could feel my right hip freezing up. Then my left calf... and right quad and left quad. OUCH!!!!! The next 16 miles were pretty freaking painful. DN stuck with me and was just super chatty. I told him he could go ahead, but he said he needed someone to talk to. Thank goodness he didn't need conversation - because I would have only been able to let loose with a long line of expletives and whining about how much pain I was in. Seriously, my leg muscles were in knots (even two weeks + a massage later, I'm still not 100% recovered) and I had to do butt-kicks every so often to keep my knees from locking up. Good times. (This is where I promised to do yoga if I ever train for another marathon)
Hydration and food went well. I did Gatorade for the most part, but some water near the end. Two (3?) mini Luna Bars, three (one at the start) caffienated Clif Shots and a few Luna Moons.
Other cheerleaders included MW and MS - who commented on how happy I was at mile 18 - I shouted a big hello to them... and how not happy I was at mile 24 (I was in robot-speed-mode). BF caught up with me again towards the end, as did HW and EH. I was delighted to have so many friends come out - especially in the craptastic (for non-runners) weather!
While we were around mile 20 or so, DN and I had this other runner who would kind of latch on behind us, then walk through the rest stops, then find us again and stick with us. It was, to be honest, a little annoying. By the end, neither of us wanted him to beat us (because we were running the whole time!). It was good to have a partner who was like-minded in that one, especially when we took off after the last aid station at a <8:00 min mile pace and cruised on in to the finish together. Eventually, I found AM again at the finish chute and nearly lost it, I was so drained - physically, as well as mentally and emotionally. I was so happy to see her - I'm glad she survived my bone-crushing hug.
I finished in 3 hours and 48 minutes. (Oh - and 32nd in my age group, out of 830!) That's an average pace of 8:42 per mile. To compare, my pace for a 10k at the Wildflower Triathlon in May and my (flat) half marathon at the Kaiser half in February was 7:46min/mile. The fact that my marathon pace is a minute slower is kind of mind-blowing. I learned that I really need to respect the distance.
Would I do another one? Well, I'm only 8 minutes off from qualifying for Boston. Sounds doable, but that's another 20 seconds faster per mile. A possibility if it was a flatter course... and perhaps a challenge I'd like to take on. Again, only if I do yoga at the same time (my poor, poor legs). And get regular massages.
If you made it through my crappy writing all the way to the end, you can click
here to see the route, elevation and pacing information from C3PO. (I forgot to stop my watch at the end, so disregard the 3:55 time, as well as the last bit of pace information)
