For once you have to live with my writing skills, because there aren't any pictures made by us. So you can find them here.
A couple of weeks ago, we met Felix Irmer and he told me that on 31. of July the SF marathon takes place. I said I've to go there and inscribed myself for the second half. For the full the trainings time was too short. From then on I did a lot of training besides my studies. Well, not really. Maybe once a week I did a small run for about 45min average, but not even that regularly. The only real training was the 20min bike ride every morning up the hill to the lab.
So more or less prepared I went this Sunday morning together with Felix, who was also running the second half, to the start in the Golden Gate Park. With the second half we were lucky because the start was only at 8:17am. The first half and the full marathon started at 5:30am. My thanks to Stephano, who offered me a place for the night, a lot closer to the starting point than our apartment in Berkeley.
With a goal of around 1h40 for the 13.1 miles (21 kilometers), we started slowly from the end of the second wave.
The first 6 miles went through Golden Gate Park. They passed by without problems. I enjoyed running through the park and looking at all the trees and small lakes. But I've to admit, that after awhile, the course got slightly frustrating. The course did some circles and back and forth inside the park. So you saw several times the runner half a mile ahead of you, just on the other side of the road.
Out of the park the road got straight and you ran through the city. The course through the city was quite easy with only light ascents an descents. We've already seen much steeper roads in SF, but I didn't had to run uphill on them this morning.
So once between mile 7 and 8, I passed the pacemaker for the 1h40 limit. I felt good, so I just run the way it went.
From mile 9 on I started to feel my feet and legs. Still okay, I kept my pace and headed for mile 10. Reaching mile 10 and 11 I passed my longest distance run in a race so far.
The next few miles, my feet felt like they were burning and entering the harbor the scene became less attractive. Even if some blister were beginning to show up, I could keep my speed and with the Bay Bridge, the goal came into view.
Only about 2 miles left and the hope for arriving soon went up. But to early celebrated, that's still 3.2 kilometers to go. Another 15 minutes to run.
The last part of the race was along the bay, passing by the baseball stadium and coming nearer to the goal, more and more spectators stood at the side and cheered all the runners. Collecting from somewhere some forces, I performed a final sprint and gained another few seconds.
Arriving after 1 hour 36 minutes and 4 seconds, I was exhausted but happy.
Results - look for bib number 30350, that's me
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