Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon, 2020
When the wind hit me, it wasn’t just that it slowed me down. It wasn’t just that it blew sand in my eyes, stung my face, and peppered my mouth whenever I inhaled. It blew away every positive thought in my mind, leaving only “when is this going to be done” and, sometimes, “what excuse can I make to drop out of this race?”
Emil Zátopek said “If you want to enjoy something, run the 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run the marathon.” If he had run Kaiser 2020, he surely would’ve admitted that the half marathon can also be one heck of an experience.
A week before the race when I woke up with a sore throat. I skipped my Tuesday and Wednesday runs and spent the rest of the week running short and easy. My strategy was to minimize stress on my body so my immune system could do its thing. I now know that this idea is not backed by evidence, and if anything the evidence points in the opposite direction: Gentle physical exercise can raise your body temperature, assisting your body in getting rid of the virus.
But in any case, I arrived at the race on Sunday having run 17 miles in the past 5 days. In spite of the week rest, I was still not feeling very good. After running around Stow Lake for a warmup, I took a walk on Strawberry Hill to think things over.
Should I race? Kaiser wasn’t a particularly important race for me. I took some time off to recover after CIM, and as a result, had only done 4 workouts in the lead-up to the half marathon. The forecast for the day wasn’t great, so I was unlikely to PR. And I was still getting over the cold, evidenced by my slow-and-painful warmup.
When I’ve made calls like this in the past, I’ve employed the just-try-it strategy. Some days I arrive at track practice with little sleep, a gentle cold, or just a feeling of weariness. I’ve found that these symptoms sometimes disappear as soon as I start running hard, while other times they are debilitating. To distinguish these two cases, I jump into the workout for a fixed amount of time (eg the 1st rep of intervals), then make the call.
I decided to do the same with this race. I would run the first mile at goal race pace, and only then could I drop out or slow down.
I entered the started corral, found Michael, and we set out at my goal pace: 5:30 min/mi. We started with the 10k runners, which meant we were still running with a pack. I looked around and realized I knew nearly a third of the runners: West Valley members, Google runners, and other folks I’ve met over years of racing. I must’ve absorbed some of the communal energy because I felt great.
We clocked in a 5:25 first mile, and I decided to try for one more. Next mile: 5:16, and I was feeling great. Alright, the race is on!
I’ve always said that the first 7 miles of Kaiser don’t really count. They’re downhill through the park, and while the first miles of a half marathon are certainly effort-full, they’re not overly painful.
As we exited Golden Gate Park and hit the Great Highway, I was full of adrenaline. The site of the ocean invigorated me. I turned south onto the Great Highway, and the world went silent. I’d spent the previous half mile running into a gentle headwind and all of a sudden it was gone.
The 2.5 miles running south along the Great Highway felt strangely like a dream. My effort level was ticking upwards and I kept thinking that my pace must be slipping. But every time I checked my watch, the mile split read almost exactly 5:30. I remember thinking: Huh, guess I’m in better shape than I thought.
Boy was I wrong. As I got close to the turnaround, I saw the leaders running back. I knew one of them and shouted out some encouragement. No response. Eh, whatever — I get a bit moody at the end of races too. But then I saw Malcolm Richards, the fastest man in West Valley. He was running no faster than I was, and his form was weird: Hunched over, head turned off to the right. Something was wrong, and I soon realized what.
I had been maintaining pace on the Great Highway only because I had a massive tailwind. When I turned around, it hit me: A 25mph headwind. In an instant, my form went from smooth-gazelle to disgruntled-anteater: Body bent forward, head turned off to the right to avoid the cutting wind, eyes mostly closed to keep the sand out.
David Goggins describes endurance sports as “the perfect crucible to learn how to manage your thought process.” I would love to tell you that I “adopted a positive mindset,” and “persevered in the face of adversity.” But that’s not what happened.
The rushing wind and cutting sand transformed my already-tired mind into a defeated one. I thought, “what excuse can I make to stop?” Is my cold preventing me from getting enough oxygen? Is that knee pain I’m feeling?
No and no. I eventually became too tired to think of an excuse and just took the path of least resistance: Continue running. I stopped looking at my watch because I knew it would only depress me more, and just stared down at the ground and kept trodding forward.
The next two miles were lonely. The leaders were out of sight and I knew there was no one behind me for a long while. One guy caught me, and I exhaled the question “can I draft off of you?”. He confidently replied back, “yeah, but I’m moving fast.” He was right, and I couldn’t keep up. I later found out he was an Olympic Trials qualifier, out on what I imagine must have been a Sunday morning jog.
Later, a full-on peloton of runners caught me, led by the fearless (and very tall) Jeff Czyz. I found Michael in this pack, as well as the lead female runner Jane Kibii. This was inspiring, and I held on. But I soon slipped to the tail end of the pack and, after a few minutes, had to let them go. My quads were destroyed from the downhill race and my lungs were gasping for air. I slowed down and fell back into no-man’s land.
After an eternity and a half, we turned back into Golden Gate Park and ran up the only hill of the course through the finish line. I clocked in at 1:15:00, over 40 seconds faster than last year’s time in spite of the wind. Finishing was, as always, the best part of the race. As my friends and teammates staggered in, we exchanged war stories and congratulated each other on finishing the most difficult half marathon of our lives.
Reflecting on the race a week later, I have one lingering thought, and it’s the same one I had after CIM: Could I have run faster? The first 10 miles of the race were excellent, but I lost nearly a minute per mile in the last 3. Though it’s actually not the pace that bothers me, it’s that feeling of total defeat in the final miles. With more tenacity, could I have stuck with Jeff, Michael, and Jane? Or were my legs shot from going out so fast? In endurance sports, the line between physical and mental ability is blurred, and this makes it hard to tell whether you “gave it your all.”
I’ll never know. Regardless, the Kaiser Half rekindled my drive to get faster and was the perfect start to a new year of racing.
