Race Report: Big Sur Marathon

I'm planning to write a separate post specifically about the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge, but I figured I'd give Big Sur its due & write a proper race report just about that race first. :)

Friends, I must say that post-Boston marathon, I was in rough shape. If you've been playing along at home for a while now, you might recall that part of the reason my Boston training cycle sucked so badly was getting injured badly enough to miss a week of training on three separate occasions, not to mention all kinds of little yellow flags & micro injuries that made it difficult to ever really build up much fitness at a stretch.

I'm pretty sure I know most of the reasons for this (which maybe I'll write more about in a future post), but just suffice it to say that I knew going into that race that I was very, very far from top form and was lucky to even make it to the start. The upside of this is that I wasn't able to run hard enough to be sore after, but I definitely did have a number of body parts screaming at me to DAMMIT WILL YOU PLEASE JUST STOP WITH THIS NONSENSE ALREADY! In all honestly, if it wasn't Boston & I didn't have so many sunk costs already, I probably would have said "Eh, screw it" & stayed in bed.

4 More Sleeps: The Race Plan

You can thank Sara at Middle Aged Runner for this little gem.

Well, here we are. Tomorrow I get on a plane to Boston & things start Happening.

It has not been the training cycle I'd hoped for--not even close. I've been so busy and stressed with the remodel, and traveling too much, and injured badly enough to lose a week of training on three separate occasions. My plantar fasciitis has come roaring back in the past few months, making running (and walking) excruciatingly painful at times, and for the last month on my runs I've felt completely, utterly exhausted, like I'm wearing lead boots all. The. Time. (We did solve that one--I am apparently badly iron deficient, and while I've started downing iron pills & red meat like it's going out of style, almost everything I've heard or read suggests that it really takes a good two months before it makes a noticeable difference.)

Which is all to say, I'm trying to be excited about the experience, but I am not betting on having a particularly fast race. In fact, I'll settle for finishing and mile 8 not feeling like mile 20. I had a massage therapist work on my foot and calf on Tuesday, which helped, and hopefully taper will have revitalized me a bit. (I keep reminding myself that for CIM 2016, I felt pretty bad and exhausted all the way up until the day before the race, so there's still hope!)

Still, in any case, I AM planning to go out there & run the best, fastest race that I can, so I think it's still worth thinking through the course & coming up with a race plan.

Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" & then there's HILLLZZ.

Oof, running a bit behind getting this one up. Progress, not perfection, right?

As I've started actually-for-real training for this race & occasionally chatting with other runners about it, people keep bringing up the course. Like "Have you ever run the course?" "Have you ever been out there on those hills?" "It's a really tricky course, you know." "OMG those HILLZ. Watch out for those HILLZ, man!"

And I'm like, "Okay? I train in San Francisco?" I mean. No disrespect to the Bostonians out there, but I did live in Boston for three months and, dudes, we have different definitions of what hills are.

Boston Marathon Week 2 of 18: speed, snow, & vertical

A white Christmas for us!

Season's Greetings from snowy Spokane, WA where we are spending Christmas with Don's family. Also, it is COLD. Yes, it is often much colder here than in San Francisco, but as our SF winters average probably 55F and rarely dip below 40F, that's not a tough bar. In Spokane it's frequently in the 30s and 40s and sometimes the mid-20s, but we knew that this year it would be been teens & low-to-mid 20s for our entire stay, so when packing I pretty much just emptied my ski bag into my suitcase.

CIM WEEK 17 of 18: Deep Breathes

Man, I do NOT understand people who talk about the "taper crazies." I love taper. I'm great at it. I don't even see why I have to run as much during taper as I do. I still had a couple of workouts this week, but outside of that, put my feet up, you say? Get lots of extra sleep, you say? Eat plenty of carbs, you say?

Done, done, and done.

SRM WEEK 6 OF 20: I Survive Bay 2 Breakers + Alllll the Race Discounts

What's that you say? You're looking for a reasonably priced half marathon in California sometime between June and December?

LUCKY YOU:

• JUNE 20 Zooma Napa Valley Half Marathon/10K - 10% off with CAL
• JUNE 21 Marina Bay Riveter Half Marathon/5K (Richmond, CA) - 15% off with CAL
• JULY 12 Shoreline Half/10K/5K (Ventura, CA) - 20% off with CALHALF1520
• AUG 9 Arroy Creek Half/10K/5K - (Simi Valley, CA) - 20% off with CALHALF1520
• ***AUG 23 Santa Rosa Marathon/Half/5K - $30 off with CALHALF30 {You guys, this is a massive discount. Also, you know *I'll* be there!!}*** (Update 8/3 -- I've been told this one's expired & no longer working. Don't know about the ones for later races.)
• SEPT 13 Clo-Cow Half/5K (Petaluma, CA) - 10% off with CAL2015
• SEPT 20 Harvest Half/10K/5K (Camarillo, CA) - 10% off with CALHALF1520
• OCT 4 Tiburon Half/5K - 15% off with CAL
• OCT 11 City to the Sea Half/5K (San Luis Obispo, CA) - $5 off with CAL5OFF
• OCT 25 Harvest Marathon/Half/5K (Paso Robles, CA) - 5% off with @CALHALFSERIES
• NOV 15 Surfers Point Marathon/Half/10K/5K (Ventura, CA) - 20% off with CALHALF1520
• DEC 13 Pomona Holiday Half/5K - $10 off with CALRUNSERIES15
• DEC 20 Holly Jolly Half/10K/5K (Camarillo, CA) - 20% off with CALHALF1520

These discount codes are because all of these races are part of the Cal Half Series. Cal Half Series is also good if you are really into medals, because they give extra ones at the end of the year if you've run I think three or more of the races. I don't know if the discount codes work for the fulls, 10Ks, or 5Ks, but you can give it a shot!

In other news, I ran my first Bay to Breakers on Sunday with Alyssa & Courtney, & did not collapse & die on the Hayes Street Hill.

These ladies. I ran my first marathon with them back in 2011,
so it was super fun to get to do my first Bay to Breakers with them as well.

Post-race. The medal was an unexpected bonus!

Our original goal was to run the race around 8:00 pace for a sub-1 hour finish, but there were various questionable joints among us so instead we decided to just take it easy & run it at a comfortable pace (which....turned into sub-8:00's anyway by the time we reached the gentle downhill grade of the Park.) That was more than fine with me, since I basically didn't sleep Saturday night & was already feeling pretty sluggish during my 3-mile jog to the start.

Since it was a long run day & I wasn't planning on actually racing, I was able to solve two problems at once (getting in 17 miles & getting home from Ocean Beach after the race). At 6:30am, I jogged from my house to the start (~3.2 miles), ran the race (~7.55 miles by my watch), & then ran back home (~6.25 miles).

Really, the trip home was farther than that, but since I *definitely* didn't want to run more than 17 miles total and had also just run 7.5 MUCH faster than normal (including one wicked-ass hill), I decided to take brief walk breaks at each mile as I head back east through the park. That whole stretch is about 3 miles of steady, gradual uphill, and after the race I was anticipating kind of a slog.

Weirdly, though, that part actually felt kind of easy. Or not easy, exactly, but requiring a lot less effort than I expected it would. I just kind of jogged along, ticking off mile after mile and never feeling like I was working all that hard.

When I got back to the Panhandle where I could see the course again, I couldn't resist stopping to take a few pictures:

Lizards

Crayons

Coit Tower [historic SF landmark]

Downhill is really the worst on my bad leg, so once I was back in my own neighborhood I walked down some particularly steep-ish ones I didn't want to run, and hit 17 miles with less than a block left to go to my house, feeling, actually surprisingly good!

Er...except for that whole not sleeping thing. That, I don't recommend. I was basically a zombie for the rest of the day.

I don't have a whole ton else to say about the race, but I'll write up some kind of race report later this week. :)

~*~*~SRM WEEK 6 OF 20~*~*~

Anticipating I'd be running a good bit faster than usual on Sunday this week (plus the hill), I didn't do any hard workouts and also traded my morning strength sessions for extra sleep.

Grand Total: 38 miles

* 30.45 easy
* 7.55 race

Monday: afternoon 6 easy / p.m. karate. I was feeling sluggish after three days off and my leg was feeling a little better, so I decided to try a few easy miles & see how it felt. It was a bit achey, but never actually started hurting. Winning!

Tuesday: 6.5 easy, but with a GIANT mothereffing hill in the middle. I figured if I was going to try to run Bay to Breakers in under an hour, I'd better get out there & remind myself what it feels like to run up the Hayes Street Hill (.69 miles with 201 ft of climbing). Oof. I'd been hoping to use my watch to see what kind of pace I could do it at without dying, but forgot to plug it back in the day before.

Wednesday: Karate.

Thursday: 6.2 easy. Same route as Tuesday, more or less, but this time with my watch. It also just happened to work out this time that I got all green lights going up Hayes Street Hill, which in one sense sucked, but at least let me finish the thing feeling like I had a reasonably accurate assessment of what pace I could do the thing at with no breaks. (Um, also, the rest of this run was at my same usual super easy effort level, but was BY FAR faster than any easy run I've done since starting this whole low heart rate/base training business.)

Friday: Rest.

Saturday: 2.3 easy. Just a couple of easy shakeout miles.

Sunday: 3.2 easy / 7.55 race / 6.25 easy = 17 long.