The 2007 San Francisco Marathon was a great success. I finished in 4:12:33, beating my goal time of 4:30 and blowing away last year's time of 5:24. My focus was on keeping a long stride and a quick pace, never slowing down into the 10+min/mile danger zone.
The challenge was in maintaining speed past mile 20. That's where I ran into trouble last year, as well as on my 22 mile training run two weeks ago. Once I started to slow down I could not regain my stride. My training pace was usually 9-9:30 min/mile at 135 bpm, which is as slow as I can go with a normal running gait. During the race, I kept an 8-8:30 pace at 150 bpm. Even though the usual tightness kicked in during the third hour, I was able to keep a strong gait. I finished the last mile at a 7:40 pace, which I couldn't be happier about.
Technically, I also had a 13.1 mile PR for the second half of the race at 2:03:38, beating my time from last year's San Jose Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon of 2:06:17. That I ran the second half of this marathon faster than the first half, as well as faster than my last half marathon, really sums up my experience.
place:
overall: 1589 / 4275
age div (M 25-29): 230 / 432
splits:
7.5 mi: 1:14:15
13.1 mi: 2:08:55
20.7 mi: 3:24:21
Comments