Almost all of it.

Today's run: Long Run of 22.4 miles at 8:43 pace
52 miles this week. Marathon is 3 weeks from today!

Galen was right.

Today's run proved Galen to be right about the end of the San Francisco Marathon Course: it is unattractive and has random hills that will feel pretty difficult at the end of the race.

But first: longest run ever! I haven't been able to say that in four weeks.

Six of us assembled for the overly long run at the bright and early hour of 7am. The time was chosen primarily to allow us to run smoothly through the final, previously unseen 6.5 miles of the course which is run entirely on regular city streets. At any other time of day, the streets would be overrun by cars, but at 7am we had these streets practically to ourselves.


(At this point, you might wish to pull up the .pdf course map and follow along from West of the 20 mile mark, where the route exits the park).

Haight
Haight Street is known for it's colorful character (and characters). One such character approached me after I was reviewing the course map with Galen, Ari and Matt (but while I was alone, Galen having gone with Matt to put some stuff in Matt's car, and Ari visiting a bathroom). The character asked me if we were taking part in a scavenger hunt. When I explained that we were about to run 22 miles, he eyed my knee sleeve and expressed concern, asking if I could bend my knee. I reassured him.

Reassembled, and with the arrival of Chris and Kevin, we embarked. Six of us! Ari had run his longest ever last week (16 or so), so this was particularly ambitious for him.

Haight starts out relatively flat, then heads rapidly downhill for the two blocks I flew down at the end of the 20 miler. It flattens again, but takes a slight incline for a block or two before shuffling strongly downhill for the turn at Buchannan. That incline may be painful after 20 miles in the race. (Here, we took the main route only-- the dotted lines on the course map show alternates that are used to keep traffic flowing.)

A short block on Hermann brought us to Market Street, which we were able to cross without pausing, first evidence that my 7am-Sunday strategy was paying off. It is a shame that the course doesn't run along Market Street for a mile or so: Market is a wide boulevard that captures essential essences of the City, but we only catch a glimpse here.

Mission - Potrero - SoMa Downhill down Guerrero, a few blocks and we reach 16th Street, bypassing the alternate route of 15th Street. Galen pointed out, as we turned the corner and viewed the hill in the distance, that those directed down 15th street get surprised by the hill, as the alternate rejoins with a left-hand turn that takes you immediately up the fairly significant two-block hill along 16th from Harrison to Florida. Harrison to Florida? Those streets sound familiar? If they do, it is because my Mission Loops route crosses 16th Street on Florida and again on Harrison, but does not see this hill (Florida inclines very subtly and then drops suddenly North of 16th).

Continuing on 16th, we pass by Sports Basement. Galen assured me that no one would be cheering from the Sports Basement location, and it is as this point that the route becomes truly barren: industrial, vacant, empty. It seems too true that no one will be found watching here, and at this point, 22 miles into the race, a little encouragement could be useful.

In fact, a little water could be useful, too. This part of town on this particular morning, about an hour earlier than when I'll be there in the race, was warm. My shirt, which I thought was light enough, was soaked down the back in sweat. I will need to pay heed to Thomas' comment (ttj) that I need a singlet (I'll start shopping for one tomorrow).

I think at this point, the course basically flattens out. Ziz-zag down to 17th, zig-zag down to Mariposa, a box through Dogpatch, and the route starts looking towards PhoneCompany Park. However, most of this stretch is even more barren, and includes a fair bit of construction adjacent to the route. At one point, you see the ballpark, and then the route veers off Illinois and takes the ballpark out of view. However, when you get to the end of Terry A. Francois, you can see the path behind the ballpark that lies ahead (perpendicular to you), and Galen mentioned how the sight of runners on that path ahead can be encouraging.

Behind the ballpark and around to the Embarcadero and we find ourselves on more familiar grounds. In fact, the breeze off the bay cooled us down quickly, and was quite welcome. At this point, we started chiding Ari on the pace (he tends to want to go faster), as we were not even 7 miles in and ahead of our desired 8:45-9:00/mile pace.

(The Pace)
We faced a mixed blessing in terms of pace. On the one-hand, going faster might feel good psychologically: if I can run so much of the course on a non-race day at 8:30, I should be easily able to surpass that on the day of the marathon. However, there is a well-known strategy of doing at least one run that takes as long as your marathon day race will be, in order to ready your body for the sensation of running for that much time. So if we kept a pace of 9:00/mile, we'd spend 3 hours and 21 minutes on this run, close to my goal time.

Embarcadero - Warf - Marina - Crissy Field
We reached Fisherman's Warf without incident, more or less. I thought I recognized a gal who was walking along in the same direction, so upon passing her, I took a look back and realized, no, that's not Aimee, and I continued along. Apparently, a couple of the other guys were looking at her too, and Kevin mentioned how she made a nasty face at him (probably because she thought we were checking her out).

At Aquatic Park, we were awash in pink. We were encountering what looked like the lead end of that day's portion of the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, with tons of people walking and hooting and hollering and wearing pink t-shirts, some with racy slogans on them. Fantastic people, as many of them cheered and encouraged us. Our route ran counter to theirs on and off until we reached the end of Crissy Field, though in between we made a fateful stop at a water fountain. I'll explain more about this later.

Presidio Off from Crissy Field, we began the hill that is Lincoln. Both Galen and Thomas, who had run the SF Marathon two years ago when the course did not include the Golden Gate Bridge, had remembered this hill asa significant challenge. When Chris and I did the first 20 four weeks ago, we didn't find this hill to be so bothersome. Today, with my cold still bothering me a bit, and my left knee starting to flash with a little pain, and having put an extra seven miles on my legs before we reached the hill, it felt harder. Additionally, the Lincoln hill is in two parts, one part before and one part after the trek back and forth across the bridge. Last time, we ran the bridge, but today's route cut out the bridge to make the route a loop close to 22 miles instead of 26.2. The result was to take the Lincoln hill in one, continuous, laborious, nose-wiping struggle.

The weather turned foggy and misty. We came across a race in progress: the Coastal Trail Challenge and Half Marathon, run by the nice folks at DSE (the same people who ran the 10K I ran in April). They were kind enough to offer water and Gatorage to us at one of their drink stations. At this point, Galen and Ari started to put some distance between themselves and the rest of us. When we exited the Presidio, they were no longer in sight.

Richmond - Golden Gate Park
We hung a left on Lake Street and started down the alternate path, since Chris and I had run the main path previously. Surprise! Hills. I recalled that along 27th Street, there was a gradual incline for a couple of blocks and then flat or downhill to the park. Along 26th Street, however, there were at least three blocks that ended with small climbs uphill. Perhaps at this point in the race it won't be a big deal, but with 15 miles already under our belts, our pace slowed going up those hills. Speaking of pace, I started doing quick calculations on our pace at this point, realizing we were awfully close to our typical 8:30/mile. Chris and Kevin agreed to slow it down some. Matt, listening to an iPod, didn't offer input.

Reaching the park, I reached into the pocket of my water bottle and discovered that my spare kleenexes were soaked. I was confused: was the mist coming through the Presidio that wet? Then it hit me: the water fountain on Crissy Field had a backed-up drain, and to get more water into my bottle, I must have dipped the bottle into the pool of water there, soaking the kleenex. And let me tell you this: a wet kleenex does not help a runny nose. I'll spare you any further details, other than to say that at the same time, my legs started to ache, creating a competition to which would be worse (the runny nose or the achy legs).

At this point, every uphill was a lot more challenging than when Chris and I had done them with fewer miles before, and I realized just what Galen had been talking about: those hills in the Mission or Potrero were going to seem a lot larger and more damaging at the end of the race.

I don't recall much of the run through the park: I've been on these roads many times. Except: I was zoned out enough to almost miss the turn onto Metson (it is an unnatural cut-back to link MLK to Middle Drive West, and truth be told, Chris caught us from going the wrong direction). Coming up Transverse, back to JFK, the hill started to punch me. Reaching the Stow Lake Loop, however, I caught a new wind. I knew we were less than two miles from the end of the run, and I started to feel like I could kick it in. Hence, the uphill portion on the second half of the Stow Lake loop didn't phase me.

However, by the time I was back on JFK and coming up to the De Young Museum, I had lost the feeling, and I was just dying to be done. Fortunately, I had a good idea of how little was left, and kept going. We found our path to the parking lot and reached the end.

Aftermath
My legs voiced complaint that I had stopped, so I had to keep walking around. I had stored a cooler with a bottle of Gatorade in it, and boy did it taste good. But even those moments fishing for things in my car caused my legs to complain. I drank the entire 32 ounce bottle over the next 20 minutes and ate a Clif Bar. During this time, we reconnected with Galen and Ari, I did a little stretching, and then parted company.

On the way home, I started to feel a bit of elation. I was still alert, my legs weren't nearly as stiff as when I first stopped, and I didn't feel like collapsing.

It is still hard to believe that the marathon itself is three weeks from today, and I am distrustful that the tapering strategy will really make this work such that I can add 4 miles and do it faster by a minute per mile! That said, bring on the Taper!

Shoe Change My schedule has about 100 miles between now and the marathon, and so I am swapping out my shoes after today's run so I have a broken in but not worn out pair of shoes. One pair of shoes in this picture has 360 miles on them, another is new. Can you tell which is which?