Sunday, October 29, 2006

Silicon Valley Half Marathon

The guys were over for poker past midnight last night, but I still managed to get up at 5am and head to the race. I got to downtown San Jose at the Tech Museum plenty early. But there was no SBUX close by! I'm not even sure that I can converse without coffee let alone run a half marathon.

I ran out with the three hour marathon pace group (so I could run 1:30 for the half), and after a mile did manage to wake up and felt good. We were hitting all the mile markers at the right time and I even had to restrain myself not to run away from them. The pacer (holding a 3 hour marathon sign) was a wellknown marathoner (he has to be a 2:30 or less marathoner) but I don't remember his name. Everyone dropped off and the pacer and another nice local MIT grad and I were by ourselves. They said "we're gonna get you past that finish line in under 1:30!".

We ran onto the LG Creek Trail at 5 miles all feeling great. I loved getting off of the road even though it wasn't a real trail. As usual my legs started hurting at mile ten around Lake Vasona, but they rallied me into keeping with them. We then exited the trail behind the Borders at Los Gatos and I could see the high school where we were supposed to finish on the track. Not even 1:28 on my watch. I thought I was golden. We started down the high school track at 1:29 for what looked like a 200m half loop. No problem, I should finish just under 1:30. The marathoners kept going and exited the track back up the trail back to San Jose. I turned left off of the track to what I thought was the finish. Oh my god, it emptied out into a huge field with at least another 200m or so chute to do! I went into full on sprint mode, but still ended up over 1:30 at 1:30:28. It was still a great race for me though and a lot of fun overall.

A cup of coffee and some sleep the night before and I hope my next half marathon (in Seattle on the 26th) will be well under 1:30. My entourage was cheering for me and we all walked over to LG Cafe for a delicious wellearned omelette breakfast.

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