San Francisco Marathon

Leading Up To The Race
So I strained my right calf on a training run about 2 weeks ago. It was still hurting on a short run last week Friday. I have not ran at all since then. So coming into this race, I was fully prepared to drop out and take a DNF. It was somewhat demoralizing to be hurt to the point where I couldn't run. I spent the week or so leading up to the race just doing weights, working on the core, and drinking caffeinated drinks. I've all but eliminated daily caffeine consumption. I've been having lots of GI issues during marathons. Since both my gels and Nuun contain caffeine, I figured I would condition myself to be used to it.

Travel and Expo
I flew out of SNA to SFO on Southwest. It was only my second time out of that airport. I love going to airports... even LAX. Once we landed in SFO, I took my annual ride on the BART. I took it to the Embarcadero station to catch the expo shuttle just outside of the Hyatt. The expo was a madhouse. After picking up my bib and shirt, I made my way over to the RunRacing booth. It's good to have friends that have a booth. I was able to drop off my backpack and get back into the crazy expo.

Chicrunner "pretending" to be busy for my picture, looks like she's shuffling cards. :)

After surviving the expo, I took the shuttle back to the Hyatt. I walked over to my hotel, Grant Plaza hotel, in Chinatown. It was a pretty old hotel with very rickety floors and it smelled like a Chinese restaurant, but there was no restaurant in the hotel.

Welcome to Chinatown

Scary elevator

Food and People
I went back out to eat lunch at L&L. If I come back next year, I'll definitely need to fit in the pho challenge at Pho Garden. But I don't want to do it by myself. After lunch, I walked over to Walgreens to buy some juice and water. On my way there I thought about stopping in Murphy's to get a beer or 3. On my way back to the hotel I stopped at the Paul Frank store. I thought about buying a Skurvy with glasses shirt but they didn't have my size.

Murphy's Pub

I relaxed in my hotel room for a few hours watching Braveheart before going to the Marathon Maniacs carbo-loading dinner. It would appear that across the street from the hotel, an old guy plays a weird Asian sounding stringed instrument ALL DAY from sunrise to sunset. It reminded me somewhat of vuvuzelas and that Asian lady singing that original theme song in the Spiderman movies. We had our meet up at Caffe Bella Venezia. We had 20+ people there. It was fun meeting so many maniacs. But for whatever reason, our food did not start coming out until almost 2 hours later. Mine did not, so I wished everyone a great race and bailed. The restaurant was just not ready for a marathon weekend. On my way back to the hotel, I stopped to eat in Sushi Rock, which was right across the street. I had seabass shioyaki, chicken katsu, and shrimp tempura. It was ok, good enough for a backup carbo-load meal.

Race Day
Nothing new on race day. One of the best advices. I bought a pair of the Injinji compression socks. I was going to wear it for the race especially since I strained by calf. But when I put it on, it was too big for my chicken legs. There was no compression whatsoever. FAIL! But since I'm well prepared, I had brought along a pair of regular toe socks. Next time I'll just bring the 2xu or Zensah calf sleeves. I met up with some of my RWOL friends and headed over to one of their office near the starting line to use the nice bathroom.

My main goal was to just finish the race in time to check out of my hotel and catch my plane. You know you're in for some serious hurtin' when your A goal is 5 hrs!
Goal A: 5 hrs
Goal B: finish first half
Goal C: DNF

1st Half
I stretched out my legs during the first mile to see how the calf responded. It was ok, but I held back knowing that during my last run, it started to hurt after 2 miles. This time it felt normal. But after the first 3 miles, the ankle did not feel right. I tried to hold it together for as long as I could taking my usual walk breaks every 30 minutes. Mentally I was losing it. The only thing that kept me going was me wanting to run across the Golden Gate Bridge. After that I could just drop out at the first half. As the race progressed, I started to run with a grimace. It actually felt better to run uphill. My friends caught me near the end of the first GG crossing. On the return crossing, that was pretty much the last of what my legs had to offer. Helen caught me here, I tried to encourage her to catch the 3:40 pace group. I think she finished 9 minutes behind them. At this point, my ankle was hurting and I haven't made the climb into the park. I took the climbs really slow as the hip was starting to bother me. Surprisingly the back didn't bother me, but that would come later. Being the stupid maniac that I am, I made the right turn at the park to continue on with the marathon. It was good seeing Kristy out there cheering because I was in a foul mood and in a world of pain.
1st Half: 2:04:22

2nd Half
I started doing a lot of walking to ease the ankle and hip pain. I stuck to my usual 3 hr 2nd half plan. There were a few sections where I tried to run with my regular stride, but it just wasn't happening. There's nothing really to report about the 2nd half. The ankle, hip, and lower back hurt. I drank a small cup of beer, walked a lot, and visited a few portapotties. I ran the last .2 in. I saw Steve cheering near the finish line.
Finish: 5:02:28

The Aftermath
I think caffeine might be the source of my GI issues. It was fine this time. But then again I wasn't running as much this time. Anyway, I walked back to my hotel. I took a shower, packed up, and headed for the airport. I bumped into Andee at the airport. She finished over 1 hour faster than me. My flight was delayed so I was wandering around and found her eating with her fiance. I could never eat so soon after a marathon. The gels and stuff always ruin my appetite. But as soon as I landed, I drove over to Mitsuwa to eat some ramen at Santouka. I love ramen.

This marathon madness really won't end until late February or March. These 5 hr marathons are really wearing me out both mentally and physically. The injuries are starting to build on each other. I was getting better with San Diego, but the body is still trashed. Once I get into 2011, things will start to wind down. It has to because I'll run out of money. :)

Thoughts on the LA Marathon 2011

The LA Marathon registration begins today. Why am I not in a rush to sign up when they warn of an inevitable sellout? One thing is, I don't think they will. But really, I've ran enough of these marathons to know if they're worth what I've paid for... ~$190 for NYC last year, yes. LA this year for $125, no. Lord knows I'll still run LA again for $145 plus active.com gouging fees. I'll run it every year because I do it to raise support for charities and I'm a marathon maniac. But honestly if you want to be a major player in this business, you can't just continue to hype your course and charge high fees. You have to take care of your runners. If you don't know how, learn from Chicago, NYC, and Boston with whom you claim to be on par.

I'll just use the New York City Marathon as an example. NY handled over 40,000 runners in 2009 versus LA's 25,000. The packet pickup and the expo was a logistical disaster at LA. It was as if they were expecting only 200 people to show up. Send someone over to check out how they handle things in NY. Also months in advance we were sent a booklet in the mail explaining everything that there is to know about the race. You can tell from the beginning that the money charged was being used properly to ensure that the runner has the best experience from start to finish, not just the race.

But bottom-line, I hope to God that the LA Marathon becomes as popular as Chicago, NYC, and Boston. It took a good step this year. I've ran it the past 7 years and I plan on running it every year. I just think it's too soon for them to be charging $145. If they must then they need to justify the cost to its runners. With that I leave you with this "timeless" music video... I LOVE LA!

Ultramarathons

Mostly Lack-of-Progress Report
For about two years, I've been unable to keep up with my friends. They have all gone on to run 50 milers and 100 milers while I'm still messing around with marathons. I know that I have a bad right leg and a bad back from years and years of playing tennis on hard courts and skiing. Tennis and skiing was fun, but for the first couple of years when I switched to running, it did not help me. I have decent speed, but I really don't have the desire to work on endurance. I preferred the shorter races. I've been forcing myself to run slower, but normally I don't run slow until that's all I could do. Also the biggest reason why I don't want to work on endurance is that my lower back gets really sore around 1 - 1.5 hours on my feet. Regardless of me standing or running any pace, it'll hurt once it reaches its time limit. That's one of the main reasons why my marathon strategy of choice has been to run the first 8 - 10 miles of the first half as fast as I can and just walk/jog the second half. I've been working on losing some upper body weight to try and alleviate the pain. There's not that much to lose, but I think once I get down to the 130's I should be fine. I'm currently hovering around 145 - 150.

I've been trying to rehab the right ankle for awhile now. I first hurt the Achilles tendon back in October 2009 right before the Long Beach Marathon. It progressively worsened because I couldn't get myself to DNS any of my paid marathons. I was finally able to rest after the Malibu Marathon. I returned almost a month later with pretty much zero running at the Las Vegas Marathon where the Achilles was getting better, but it was still too soon of a return.

For the next 3 or so months, I kept resting for the most part with a measly weekly mileage of ~3.5 (excluding races) and just crawled through my paid marathons. I even managed an AG DFL at Sycamore Canyon 30k. I remember sitting down on a boulder trying not to pass out. It was not a smart idea to run a half marathon the day before a 30k trail race when I was so out of shape. Fun times. Good thing was that the Achilles finally was about 100%. That's when I got greedy and ran the Carlsbad 5000 all day 25k. It was fun running fast, but apparently I hurt my anterior tibial tendon. I thought I had just tied my laces too tight, but it was definitely swollen. Again I mostly rested and didn't increase the mileage until I stopped feeling discomfort. It was mostly annoying and didn't hurt. While I did get through my races, my endurance still sucked since my weekly mileage had been below 20. My attempt to run the Country Music Marathon on Saturday and the La Jolla Half Marathon the next day was thwarted by bad weather in Nashville. But I was glad to finish in about 4:30 at San Diego. After my bad race at Seattle, I finally was able to increase my mileage to a point where my base was big enough to finally put in a real marathon training cycle. But during a recent longish run (~11.6 miles), I took a bad step and stretched out the calf. It burned when I pushed off so I knew I strained it. When I go easy and cruise it's fine, but if I tried to push the pace it was painful. At work it would hurt to go down stairs. But surprisingly a few days later there's no longer any discomfort. I will go for a short run on Friday to test it out. I'm hoping it wasn't anything serious because the SF Marathon is right around the corner and we all know this maniac isn't going to put in a DNS.

Tracking Badwater Runners
My least favorite season is definitely summer. I hate the heat. But July is always a great time to track those running the Badwater Ultramarathon. In honor of those running in 120+ weather, I ate piping hot ramen at Santouka on Monday and at Shizuma Ramen on Tuesday. I believe Shizuma is fairly new or a remodeled restaurant. I had their pork chashu ramen. Their appearance suggests that they're Japanese, but I think they're Chinese. So no surprise that it tastes similar to Kohryu, but nowhere near as good. Their menu is very limited and rather unappealing.

Shizuma Ramen - Pork Chashu Ramen

Anyway... just how do they do it? I'm uncomfortable walking around in 85 degree weather. I cannot imagine running around in triple digit weather. The hottest race I've ran in was in the low 90's... the 2004 LA Marathon. That was ridiculously hot enough for me.

The Future
I'm planning to make my second attempt at completing an ultra with the Santa Monica Mountains 50k in November. I have friends running the Noble Canyon 50k in September. But I'm not sure I can get my body ready by then. I think I should stick to my conservative plan. But we'll see... run or die, right? :)