I finally ran my first half marathon today 07-28-19 in The 42nd Biofreeze SF Marathon. This has been one of my goals of the year. Suffice to say it has been one of the best day of my life so far. Here is the result of my race:
Race Report:
The race started at 6:46 AM at Mission Street and The Embarcadero San Francisco As soon as I started running, the adrenaline kicked in and I felt I could run faster than normal. However I still tried to keep a pace around 9 minutes / mile. There were around 6 water stops along the race and I stopped by all of them and refueled with eletrolyte water. The first uphill around half of the race was longer and higher than expected so I was conservative in my pace and slowed down to about 13:30 minutes / mile. Following that was a long downhill which helped me recover my pace, however that had a bad affect on my ankle. Later on, I had to stop by the medic to apply some pain relief gel. This is a surprise to me as the water does provide instant energy and I felt I could run fast again right after drinking. Also I did not have to drink as much as usual. My legs start hurting quite a lot at around 10 mile in, which meant stopping by the medic again for the gel. They seemed to have instant effect but wore off quickly. I think I could have pushed myself harder in the last 2 miles of the race. In stead I kept conserving energy and when I finished, I didn’t feel as tired as my practice run that I did a few weeks ago.
Some other stats about my training journey:
- Training duration: 8 weeks
- Number of running hours: 24
- Number of miles: 145
From not being able to run much from February this year, it has been a good journey so far. Ever since I found out about Strava, it has been the source of motivation to get me running. There are a lot of runners out there and seeing how they push themselves everyday to run harder and faster is truly wonderful. I am glad to join the running club and hoping to continue for a long time. Also thank you to my friend Tri Hoang for pushing me, it is good to have a running buddy.
If you want to get started in running, I suggest checking out Couch 2 5K Program. This will help guide you along the way from not running to your first 5K. Get out there and start running!