Busy day along the Embarcadero!

Today's run: Warm up run of 3 miles, Marathon Goal Pace run of 14 miles at 7:45 pace
51 miles this week. Marathon is 5 weeks from today!

After a late night getting home from Berkeley, I thought I might suffer on the run today. And today's run was to be a challenge.

This run would be my longest paced-run of the training. In short, I'm trying to get used to running at the pace I hope to run in the marathon for prolonged distances, and under conditions of tiredness. Hence, doing this run at the end of a 50 mile week and doing it after a 3 mile warm up might provide the training stimulus to prepare me to do this pace over 26.2 mile 5 weeks from today. Ack! 5 weeks from today!

Chris joined me, meeting me at the Ferry Building, prepared to do the route that takes care of the most flat portions of the marathon course, but also is an out and back.


From the Ferry Building, we headed South towards the Phone Company Ballpark for our warm-up. When I reached what I believed to be the turnaround point at 1.5 miles, I noticed that my watch/heart rate monitor displayed 06:59 as the time (a very unlikely time for 1.5 miles). Then I noticed that it wasn't moving. I pressed some buttons. No luck. The watch was effectively stuck. It is as if it is a computer and the mouse froze, and you need to reboot. I didn't know how to reboot a watch, however. Chris didn't have a watch on him. Hence, the idea of doing a paced run, where I had painstakingly identified the mile markers for 14 miles and committed most of them to memory, was practically lost.

I began to feel a bit cursed in terms of paced runs. The past paced runs went as follows:

• 10k simulation: couldn't keep pace due to many factors
• Lactate Threshold run in Maui: too humid and hot
• Previous Marathon Goal Pace run: missed a turnaround point and threw off the mile markers
• Previous Lactate Threshold run: skipped enitrely, due to the left knee injury.

Instead, we marked time at the clock at the Ferry Building, which would give us pacing feedback at just two points (mile 11 and mile 14). And we headed off.

Several factors lead to some severe crowding/activity along the route:

• Gay Pride Parade (made it tricky to find parking, initially)
• Cruise Ship disembarking (we swung into the street to avoid the throng on the sidewalk)
• Presidio Relay (didn't get in our way, and it was nice to see Mike, Mai and other K-Stars who had completed their races)
• Jints/A's game at Phone Company Park (crowds of fans approaching the park)

As we passed the Presidio Relay finish spot, we noticed that our pace seemed sort of slack. We had been trying to keep to a 8:00/mile pace, but came to some realization that our conversation might have distracted us from pace, so we picked it up a bit. Coming back past the Presidio Relay tables, we called out to someone to ask what time it was, and thought that we were potentially 2 minutes behind pace (at just the 6 mile mark out of 14).

Then we really picked it up.

Now, I'm the first to realize that the odds of the watch of the person who told us what time it was being in perfect synch with the clock on the Ferry Building was slim to none, but it still prompted us to go faster. I started to identify to Chris how many miles we were into the 14 mile paced-segment, and we tried to keep the faster pace. As we approached the 11 mile mark, the Ferry Building clock came into view, and it appeared we were now 2 minutes ahead of the 8:00/mile pace, possibly closing in on the 7:45 pace that I had hoped to do.

We kept pushing to keep the pace going, running past the Ferry Building down to the ballpark, dodging baseball fans, and hit the turnaround. I was feeling pretty taxed, but had enough left to push a little at the very end, as we cruised in (and stopped, eagerly), having hit the total time of a 7:45/mile pace. Wow.

It turned into a nice warm day, and we got to stretch bayside, in the sun.

Two more weeks at 50 miles per week, including a 10k, and then it's taper and race!