The SF 2nd Half Marathon
🎵 I left my legs in San Francisco. 🎵
That’s how it goes, right? More accurately, I left my legs on the course of the San Francisco 2nd Half Marathon. Somewhere around mile 11 they got ahead of me and I haven’t felt them since.
I ran a 1:14:04, breaking my previous best (from 7 months ago) by over 90 seconds (Strava link). To say this is unexpected would be an understatement. I went into the race with low expectations, having just returned from a series of trips which left me with tired legs and little time for regimented training.
There were 3 factors that likely contributed to the PR: An obsessive race, a book, and opportunistic training. However, as my sister likes to say, we can’t A/B test our lives, so the effect of these factors is unknown.
An Obsessive, Vengeful Race
The SF 2nd Half Marathon allegedly starts at 6:45am. In reality, it starts when the first place marathoner crosses mile 14. At 6:45am, the national anthem had been sung and we were all in our corrals, fingers on watches. When the announcer started doing crowd work, we knew that the lead pack hadn’t yet reached mile 14.
The 7 minutes of commentary that followed were admittedly hilarious, with the announcer interviewing a runner chosen at random, and later demanding we all run the race backwards. But it left everyone antsy to get started.
This, combined with the downhill start, led to a very fast start. I held back, allowing some 25 people to get ahead of me. Whether this was a good strategy, I don’t know. It did, however, allow me to slowly pick people off through the rest of the race.
I kept a tally of the half marathoners I passed. This was a strategy I learned during Ragnars, all-night relay races where you count and prominently display your “kill count”. With each person I caught, I would set my eyes on the next runner, then slowly reel him in. My final tally was 8.
With two miles to go, I caught sight of my friend Ken. We had planned to run the race together but were separated at the start when he took off with a faster pack. At the 11 mile marker, I could barely see his CMU singlet in the distance. I painstakingly clawed back the seconds and ultimately finished 3 seconds behind him. While I didn’t beat him, the effort was certainly worthwhile. My last two miles averaged 5:30, cutting 20 seconds off of my race time.
The Book
I love running books. My favorites include The Perfect Mile, Born to Run, 26 Marathons, and Eat and Run.
Running books can be repetitive, and even formulaic. I don’t mind much because I don’t read running books for entertainment, or even for factual information. I read them for the way they inspire me to run.
Reading 26 Marathons put me in a professional’s racing mentality, where race-day issues (ranging from hamstring tightness to leaving a nasal strip in your shoe) were obstacles to be calmly considered and deal with, rather than catastrophes to panic about.
When I was reading Eat and Run, I was inspired to take long, rambling trail runs through Northern California’s state parks. The same happened with Born to Run, perhaps the most famous running book of all time.
In lead-up to the SF Half Marathon, I’ve been reading Emil Zátopek’s biography, Today We Die A Little. For anyone who hasn’t heard of him, Zátopek was a Czech runner most famous for taking Olympic gold in the 5k, 10k and marathon in the same year, also breaking the record in each event. And, it was his first marathon.
Zátopek’s training methods made him one of the best at managing pain during workouts and races. He was known for doing 40x400m, running each 400 all-out. His secret, if it can be called that, was to develop an instinct to handle pain by pushing harder rather than easing up. It’s one I’ve tried to adopt during workouts, and I applied during the race.
Opportunistic Training
Zátopek seemed to always find a way to train. When stationed in the Czech army, he would run the snowy roads in his army boots. When on watch, he would sometimes run in place to get in some “miles”. He’d practice holding his breath in an attempt to increase lung capacity, at one point passing out.
I was traveling for the 8 weeks leading up the the SF Half Marathon. Zátopek inspired me to take a more opportunistic approach to training during this time. Michael and I commandeered a narrow, hilly road in Salzburg for a session of hill repeats. I got a run in during a layover, and generally snuck in mileage where-ever I could.
Zátopek inspired me to run 70 mile weeks while traveling, something I didn’t think I could do, much less enjoy. The 1–2 unplanned workouts per week likely helped me during the race, and are a reminder that quality time and total mileage are more important than following a specific plan to a t.
At the beginning of this year, I set 3 racing goals. A 4:40 mile, 2:37 marathon (5:59 pace), and a 1:15:30 half marathon (5:45 pace).
I beat my half marathon goal by over a minute. It may seem like I’m sandbagging these goals, but in reality I’m just not certain where my fitness will take me.
When I joined my first running club (Google Mountain View Lunch Runners), I met people who were so unfathomably fast that I figured they had been training through high school and college, and were genetically gifted. I’m now approaching or surpassing some of their times, and it feels unreal. At the same time, I’m much, much slower than the fast West Valley guys, some of whom are Olympic Trials Qualifiers.
But running is, after all, about the journey. In the words of triathlete Chrissie Wellington, there’s never a destination, just the impulse to grow.
