Rangersmith's Collection of Tales, Musings, Photos, and Humor Relating to Hiking and the Outdoors: San Francisco Marathon

I just ran the SF Marathon this Sunday. My finish time was terrible, just short of 5 hours. But I did finish, and I finished in stride, only walking on one hill where I realized that maintaining the dictionary definition of a running stride was actually slower than a good walking gait. (I made this observation after noticing that the guy next to me was going just as fast but he was walking!)

Anyway, far from tooting my own horn about a race where I finished in the bottom 45th percentile for my age, I wanted to write about this for two reasons: 1. How poorly I trained and, 2. How much I learned about myself.

I have never in my life engaged in such a challenging athletic feat on such poor training. Indeed, the orange boot pewter quest I referred to in my prior post was the only real intensive training I had this month and I had not run a single 20 mile run in over 30 days. Training takeaways? Trail running rocks, it is much better than flat road running. An extended taper is o.k., and will give you fresh legs on race day, but don't ever expect to run a record time if you have run only 7 days in the 5 week period before the race. The mere fact that I had put in some big miles in the 6 months prior was just enough to give me the physical stamina to complete this race.

As for learning about myself. I gave up on this race! I knew that my summer schedule was getting so busy that there was no chance I would ever train effectively according to the numerous marathon training schedules I had amassed. I saw no gaps in my schedule between work, kids, sporting, volunteering, etc. It was actually a depressing first half of summer, only refreshed by being a kid again at scout camp. Down and out, I pretty much stopped training.

About a week prior to the race I emailed the SF Marathon and asked if I could switch my marathon bib for a half marathon bib. Getting no response I showed up at the "solutions" desk on packet pick up Saturday and asked if I could switch. I said "I understand the money is gone and the half marathon is sold out, but I can I still do it?" She told me "No" and that was the best thing she could ever have done. For not only am I a cheap son of a bitch, I also subscribe to the bumper sticker slogan "Death Before DNF." With no way to weasel my way out I was set on finishing this race.

I made a contract with myself. I would start the race and if I had any notable injury or significant fatigue by the half marathon mark, then I would turn it in there and ride the bus of shame back to the marathon start/finish line. Either way, there was a Lagunitas beer waiting for me, right? There are still moral victories, aren't there? Turns out by the time I got to half way mark my splits were under 10 minutes. I was on schedule to run a 4:30 marathon. Not too shabby. I knew that my poor training would see that goal slip in to the abyss as the miles added up, but it was good enough of a performance that I made that right turn in Golden Gate Park and proceeded along the full Marathon course, instead of turning left and finishing at the half marathon mark.

By the time I got to about mile marker 23, I knew I had this. I started thinking about all of the things that made it happen and the biggest concept that came to mind was - "Dan, stop selling yourself short." I may never be a pro soccer player or astronaut; there are goals that are not attainable. But, between our most optimistic fantasies and our pessimistic self assessment of reality, there is a lot of room to maneuver. Don't ever forget that, and make it a part of your formal decision-making framework.