Completed the SF marathon again on August 3rd.  Was not planning on running this year as I had not trained like last year.  But as the date came closer, I couldn’t resist.  I did a trial run of 8 miles to gather some confidence and finally registered a few days before the event date.  The goal was to complete in 5 hours and so I joined the wave group that had the EFT of 5:00 – 5:15.

My wave started at 6:30 am in the morning.  It was the same route – starting near the ferry building at embarcardero, running along the bay, through the beach near Chrissy field, climbing the hill towards golden gate bridge and return to the golden gate park and to the hilly streets of SF, along the baseball park to the finishing line. 

The first 10 miles were ok and I ran at a moderate pace with the pace group.  At mile 13, when the half- marathoners were finishing their race, I was cursing myself on signing up for the full.  I could hear one of the volunteers cheering and saying “…you are half way there.  Only 13 more miles to go…”.  I think this is one of their standard lines for cheering the runners at half-way point.  But unlike last year, I didn’t find those words encouraging.  My legs had started giving up on me.  Waves of cramps were sweeping all over the body.  From mile 18, it was a struggle.  I had to stop and stretch at every mile to release the lactic acid build up and relax the cramps.  This was an expereience that helped me realize the importance of proper training.  I finally crawled through the finish line in 5:25:29.  I was glad that I was able to finish it within the cut-off limit of 6 hours.  But I will never run again without proper training.