Not only did I break the Kaiser Curse, I also brought my more general half marathon dry spell to an end--Sunday's race was my first half marathon *race* since October 2018 and my first 13.1+ mile run of *any* kind since July 2019. Also feels good!
Why did I sign up for this race?
The Kaiser race is super local for me (less than three miles away) and since I do a lot of runs in Golden Gate Park and surrounding SF, I know the course really well. I'd run the half once before, the 10K twice, and the 5K once (not to mention DNFing the half once and signing up & not being able to run it so many times I've lost count, hence the curse). The course is (mostly) nice and relatively fast, the weather is usually pretty good (usually), and with the exception of the bag check pickup in 2020 (it was 2+ hours before they found my bag!), it's always been very smooth and well-run.
I signed up for the half last summer when registration first opened and there was a chance they'd have to significantly limit the field due to COVID. I'd just started training again in earnest, SF case numbers were at an all-time low, and in a burst of optimism about the world that I hadn't experienced in quite a while, I signed up for this and a couple other half marathons, excited to spend the next few months getting back in shape, throw down in Golden Gate Park, and just see what happened.
Basically, several months of right hip dysfunction where I just could not manage to put together more than a few weeks of kinda-sorta-60/40-okay training in a row. I strained the same hamstring twice and also spent most of that time feeling physically terrible--I was exhausted *ALL* the time for no good reason I could think of (I was only running 20-30 miles a week), not sleeping well, and not getting any faster with training. In fact, for the most part, my races just kept getting worse and worse. I started to feel very discouraged and demoralized about running in general and to have near-debilitating anxiety about racing. (Pre-race anxiety ➡️ not sleeping before a race ➡️ running terribly ➡️ *even worse* anxiety ➡️ wash/rinse/repeat. Good times!)
When I strained my hamstring for the second time at the end of September, I decided to call it a season. I abandoned my October race plans and stopped running completely in order to try give my right hip & hamstring a chance to heal. I was also going on vacation for most of November so it's not like I was going to accomplish much running-wise in October anyway.
I'd planned to hit KP training hard after we got back. Alas, though my hip felt much better, I pulled a calf muscle early in December which took me out for almost another entire month. Okay fine, I thought; KP won't be a fast race for me no matter what, but even just *finishing* a half marathon will be great progress at this point.
And then, apropos of nothing, I tweaked a tendon in my right foot/ankle just a few short runs into the new year. Which meant several more days completely off.
At this point, I was very close to throwing in the towel and forgetting about Kaiser altogether (or at the very least downgrading to the 10K). My runs had only been 3-4 miles, and I was not 100% confident I could work my way up to 13 in the (very small number of) weeks that were left.
And then I said, "Y'know what? Fuck it. We're doing this. Er. Attempting to do this." With one week to go I'd managed to work my way up to 12 easy miles, still feeling strong and healthy, so my odds of safely & happily finishing a half felt pretty darn solid. *phew!*
Race Day:
At first, the only real goal was to finish feeling good and get that 13.1 monkey off my back. Given my lack of training, I didn't care about pace or time and was really just thinking about it as a supported long run. Then when I finished my easy 12 miler in a very comfortable 1:53 (~9:24 pace), it occurred to me that if I pushed it juuuust a bit faster than "easy," I could finish under 2 hours (~9:09 pace). I had no desire whatsoever to suffer or push myself to see how fast I could run 13.1; I just kind of thought having some kind of very loose, very attainable goal might make the morning a bit more interesting.
On race morning, I met Sesa, Tennille, and Jen near the start (masked up as requested by the race).
Tennille and Sesa were running the 5K and Jen was running the 10K; for various reasons, all of us had plans to keep our various races low-key and pleasant and just enjoy being in the race atmosphere again. The 5K went off at 8:00; since Jen and I weren't particularly worried about a slow start, we lined up around the 10 minute/mile signs for the half & 10K start at 8:10.
In my head, I had a very loose plan to use the first 3-4 miles as a warm-up, turn it up just a bit after that if I felt good, then see how fast I could close without making myself miserable. I had my watch set to finish time (my preferred race setting) which shows distance remaining, predicted finish time, and overall average pace. Since I was keeping it easy and hadn't warmed up (and the first mile or two of my easy runs are almost always super slow), I expected the first mile to be somewhere in the 10:00 range, so I was shocked to see 9:10 for my first split!
I figured once we started heading back uphill in the 2nd mile, I'd see a bit of slow-down, but no; 9:11. I have run enough half marathons to know that mile 2 is much too early to celebrate feeling good, but given what I knew about the course, I was cautiously optimistic that sub-2 hours would be completely doable.
Mile 3 (somewhat uphill) was a bit slower at 9:19, but after that we hit the nice, comfortably-rolling-but-net-downhill of JFK Drive through the north side of Golden Gate Park and it was negative splits all the way to the ocean without much extra effort (8:54, 8:44, 8:19, 8:14). At this point my watch was predicting a finish time of like 1:49, but I knew better; the last sixish miles of this race are three miles of flat, straight, exposed slogging along the Great Highway, three miles back, and one last bad joke of an uphill to the finish.
If it's particularly hot or windy, the Great Highway is where you will suffer in this race. Thankfully it was neither last Sunday; while it was sunny, the air was cool, and there was only the faintest hint of a breeze as I headed into mile 8. I thought my pace would probably slow a bit now that we were no longer rolling downhill, and it did (8:32). It was mile 9 where I could feel my lack of training starting to catch up with me; even these days, usually on an easy run I can bust out a couple of sub-8 miles if I want, but the longer mile 9 went on, the more I went from "This is easy and comfortable" to "You know, I'm not sure I can run any faster than this for four more miles." So miles 9 & 10 were slower (8:47, 8:47), but not by as much as I was expecting.
Hitting the turnaround and starting in on the last three miles, I thought, "OK! Time to rally! We are very comfortably in the 1:55 ballpark, let's see if we can get to 1:54 or 1:53!" Which kind-of-sort-of worked, for one mile (8:27). After that my lack of training *really* started to rear its ugly head, and I spent miles 12 & 13 mostly just talking myself out of walking (8:46, 9:00).
I lost a tenth of a mile somewhere in the middle of the race (a combination of imperfect tangents & GPS error I'm sure), so my watch had been beeping before the mile markers for several miles. So between mile marker 13 & the finish, my Garmin clocked .22 miles. Apparently, I actually managed to rally a bit on the uphill (1:57 / 8:52 pace).
So, yeah--the end of the race was harder than I expected, BUT finishing under 2:00? Not a problem.
- Official: 13.1 / 1:56:05 / 8:51 pace
Garmin: 13.22 / 156:06 / 8:47 pace
Nothing mind-blowing, but overall I felt very good about the effort (especially the first 7 miles) and honestly quite surprised given my lack of training and how absolute shit my running and racing was in 2021. It made me think that if I can stay healthy and gradually work my way back into speed/tempo work, I might be able to put up some halfway respectable races later this year. :)
What's Next??
Oakland Running Festival 10K on Sunday, March 20! It's on the PA Road Circuit so I am planning to try to really race and see if I can at least better my (horrific) 10K efforts from last summer. Speed work, ho!
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