Towards dusk of the holiday season our house organized a Secret Santa gift exchange. My Secret Santa registered me for the Kaiser Permanente Half-Marathon. Awesome!
The race took place this morning, Super Bowl Sunday. Lauren dropped me off near the start of the point-to-point course and I fell into line with dozens of fellow spandex-wearing early-morning risers as we cut through Golden Gate Park to Stow Lake. The pre-race buzz in crisp morning air is infectious and I found myself smiling ear-to-ear. While near 9,000 registered for the half-marathon and 5K, it’s a special group who wakes up early on the holiest of sports holidays to run a footrace, even if we share different motivations. One guy was laughing with his friends about how running 13.1 miles is the best way to ease the guilt of eating fistfuls of stadium food for an entire afternoon and evening.
I met up with Diego and we chatted causally about strategy. He is a bit of a half-marathon expert having recently run a handful of 13.1 mile races in Cabo San Lucas, throughout San Francisco, and at Clearwater, Florida as the last leg of the 70.3 Ironman World Championships. This would be my first official half-marathon race. I, too, had done the length in training and in half-Ironman events, but never as a pure footrace. My goal, in training for Big Sur, was to simply run as consistent of a 7:00 minute/mile pace as possible.
Besides having been put under house arrest with the flu in the week leading up to the race, all else made for a perfect event: cool and clean air, blue skies, a fairly flat course through Golden Gate Park and along the Great Highway, plenty of port-a-potties (very important), a well-marked and supported course, clear mile markers, and my dad cheering me on. He called me early in the morning saying, “You shouldn’t be running with the way your body’s been feeling lately. But if I know you, you are going to anyway. And I’m on my way to watch.”
In all the years that I have done sports–from AYSO soccer as a four-year-old to NCAA Division I athletics (rowing) as a college student–there is only one event in my athletic history that my dad was unable to attend: an early season Little League baseball game when I was in fourth game. I remember because he felt terrible about having to miss it. (Dad was on a rare business trip in Japan.) Even this morning, as a 24-year-old city-dwelling young man, I felt like a proud little kid excited to perform in front of his hero.
I think this explains, in part, how I was able to race so well. Right from the shooting of the gun, I felt smooth, long, lean. Effortlessly, I fell into a 6:45-pace; so easy was it that I felt like I was exerting undue effort restraining myself from running faster. But I had learned, after completely bonking within one mile of my first Northern California Championship cross-country race as a rangy and pimple-faced high school freshman, that running a few adrenaline-fueled hundred yards is much different than tactically maneuvering through an entire race.
Luckily, I was wearing my Garmin Forerunner 205 which I forced myself to check every half-mile or so. It was good I did–I caught myself dipping into the low 6:30s, potentially ruining my legs for the last 5000 meters. Between mile four and six, however, I opened up my stride a bit and cruised down an ever-so-slight downhill section of the course, clipping a 6:15-20 pace.
Around mile six or seven, the course takes runners from the park and deposits us on the Great Highway. It was a gorgeous panorama: miles of breaking waves along Ocean Beach. But the slight-downhill in the park turned into a slight-uphill stretch of open highway. Rather than force myself to slow down into my goal pace, I had to push past a comfortable rhythm to stay between 6:50 and 7:00 minute/mile pace.
I sipped from cups of Gatorade at each aid station and felt well-hydrated, but fearful on bonking, I downed some PowerGel right before the turnaround point near mile eight. The only time I felt I was “counting miles” was 10-12, but I managed to stay pretty consistent. Mile 13 came up almost too fast and I sprang off my toes into a home-stretch sprint.
This is where my only criticism of the race comes in. I wish that there was a volunteer or two stationed close to 500 meters from the finish line telling runners, explicitly, how far left to run. All I heard was “almost there”, but “almost there” means a lot of different things to different people. And because the finish line was hidden around a tree-lined tight-corner, I didn’t know just how close I was to finishing.
And so I came through the chute amazingly fast–I passed 15+ people in the last few hundred yards alone, feeling like a strong sprinter. It was a great way to end the race and I beat my goal time of 90 minutes, clocking a pretty comfortable 87 minutes, averaging 6:45/mile. I indulged in the feeling of confidence born from running a half-marathon with relative ease, at a consistent pace, and indicating a strong level of fitness. But a part of me was also wishing I pushed the entire race. Maybe then I could have run near 80-minutes.
And that’s a great thing about sport. No matter how well-executed, I have never been entirely satisfied with a race. Even if achieving my goal, in place or time, there is some deep hunger to be better. To push it a little harder next time. To flirt with danger by red-lining it as long as possible. It’s not an entirely smart strategy, to go hog-wild every single race, especially if not the “culminating” or “goal” event of a season. I am inspired by the grace, beauty, determination, and power of athletes around me. But I am also fueled by a restless curiosity to know, How fast could I be? I hope to ask, and attempt to answer, this question forever.
Run With It,
J.R. Atwood
I teach spinning (indoor cycling) twice a week — a 45-minute workout on Tuesday mornings and a 60-minute class on Friday mornings. A number of participants often ask for a “set-list” which I will be posting on a regular basis. The mixes and workouts on Friday are often similar to the Tuesday set, but longer. Today’s workout…
