So a new year has started and now I'm aiming to get my 2010 running schedule. This was also the year that I was finally going to run my fist full marathon. Also the challenge for the first few months of the year was balancing my running schedule with busy season, as I was set to work 60-75 hour work weeks. Initially I did have a good balance going on, however I quickly learned to find out that it became more challenging with tight deadlines that were set with each job. So with my first race in 2010 coming up in February, the biggest thing was to maintain my level of fitness prior to the Kaiser Half.
Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon 2/7/2010
This was a long long day as my race and the super bowl coincided at the same day. So with that I woke up around 5 to make sure that I had breakfast and hydrated well prior to the race. Pretty much the race took place at Golden Gate Park and parts on the great highway. One good thing I had been doing prior to race was getting in a couple of runs at the park prior to the race so that I had an advantage in knowing the course well. It was pretty easy for me to find parking since I knew my friend lived a few blocks away, so I wouldn't park close to all of the runners where it could get crowded. It also made it easy for me to get my warmup run in just to get to the starting line. So the starting gun went off on time and there we go starting through the park, into the panhandle, and back into the park. For the first few miles I was going at ridiculous pace at around 7:00/mile. I knew that there was no way I could keep this pace for the next 10 miles, so I let off the pedal and got back into my groove. One of the challenges of this course was that there were a couple inclines that kind of threw me off, so it was taking a toll on me a bit. The biggest thing was that I made sure to push through it and regain my composure once we hit the decline portions of the course. So towards mile 7 and 8, we headed out to the great highway alongside ocean beach. It provided some awesome scenery with the ocean and the beaches and it was also a clear sunny day. As we looped around to come back, there was another slight setback: the headwind coming from the ocean. It pretty much slowed me down, so I had to push harder just to maintain my goal pace. As I got closer to the last two miles, I looked at my garmin forerunner and noted that I was well within my goal of breaking 1:40. So when the last half-mile approached, I started picking up my stride and kicked hard towards the finish.
Final Half-Marathon Time 1:38:40
I was so stoked when I saw my time since I was pretty close to breaking under 7:30/mile pace. I felt really good but pretty sore at the same time since I ran that race pretty hard. However I had to find the shuttle to get to my car ASAP since I had to drive over to SFO to pick up my roommate who was coming back from Vegas and then drive back to the house and get it ready for the super bowl party. We threw such an awesome party with some beer pong, friends, drinks, food and a pretty exciting game. It was an awesome Sunday to have!!
After this race, I was pretty confident for all of my future races and was on good training program prior to running my first full marathon. However like everything else in life, there were setbacks and motivation issues that I will face.
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