Part 3 The Run

One word to describe this run from an east coast perspective, Epic.  This is by far the most difficult portion of the race.  The hills, steps, sand, sand stairs, more hills, and downhill's make it so.  Not to mention you run right along the bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge, out to the outer bay/Pacific Ocean and back.  People who get to run on these trails are spoiled.

The run has pavement, crushed gravel, single track flat and with stairs, a tunnel where you have to duck, cliffs, and beach sand.  All that combined with the technical and hilly nature are what make it one of the great runs I have ever been on.

When I came out of transition I was right at 1:40:00 on my watch, so I knew even with a slow 10 minute pace I would coast home under 3 hours. Piece of cake, right?  I didn’t expect to be challenged like I was out there.  We started out on the pavement for a brief moment then headed back out to the beach at Crissy Field.  This part is on crushed gravel and is very firm, and the bay and bridge are right next to you, so lots of ways to check out mentally for a moment.  The sun was nice and high, and temps were pretty warm for San Francisco.  As I turned to run along the beach the leader and winner Hunter Kemper passed me on his way to the finish.  He was motoring.  A few moments later Andy Potts and Macca were in hot pursuit, but were a bit far back to catch him.  Close to the 2 mile mark you hang a left at the end of the beach and the climbing begins.  After the first brief climb you get to run under the Golden Gate Bridge and that was pretty cool.  The path has stairs and single track, and you had to pay attention for the leaders still coming down the hill right on top of you, not to mention your footing.  The pace slowed as it was tough to pass anyone here, but everyone was moving with no walkers.  There was also a tunnel that had about 5 feet of clearance at one side where you really had to get low to clear your noggin.  This total climb up to the road was a little more than a mile in length and had right at 300 feet of climbing.  I was gassed towards the top and started walking for a few seconds.  Thankfully I had a couple of competitors urge me to keep it up and that was enough encouragement to get running again.

We topped out on the road above the ocean and had some shade cover for a few moments.  At the three mile point I checked my split and was surprised to see it at 27 min, so with the tough climb I was already 3 min above needed pace.  I thought surely all that uphill would have slowed it more, but not so.  It was all downhill for about a half mile as we descended past the top of the sand ladder then turned on a winding dirt road that took us all the way down to the beach.  The sand proved a little more difficult than I thought it would be, just hard to get good footing and you definitely felt it in your glutes more than normal running.  After the turnaround it was back down the beach to the sand ladder.

The sand ladder is as tough as you can expect.  I don’t think I saw anyone run for more than a few seconds, as you were already a little uncomfortable from running on that soft sand.  I pulled up a lot on the railing and used as much upper body as possible to save my legs.  The ladder covers .13 miles in distance but rises 123 feet in this quick amount of time.  You just can’t imagine how steep it is unless you are on it.  Once you are at the top you get to climb another 150 feet over the next half mile to top out the uphill portion.  So with the ladder and uphill after it, you are looking at 300 feet in .75 mile, quite a workout.  My split for the sand ladder was 3:24. I started feeling cramping in my quads at this time, I am pretty sure it was effort and not hydration as I was drinking sips of water at most of the aid stations.  My legs just are not used to that much uphill that quickly.  I was actually a bit concerned that it would get worse, but once headed back downhill it was manageable.  I took some cytomax to drink at the next aid station and went back down the drop at Golden Gate Bridge as fast as possible.  I passed a lot of people here, my main goal was to lower my average as much as possible.  At the 6 mile split I was at 2:38, so I ran the first 10K with all those climbs and stairs at a 9:20 pace.  At this point I felt good and turned up the pace.  I had good posture, a decent kick (for me at least) and covered the final two miles around a 8:30 pace to finish the run in 1:11:32 for a 8:57 min/mile pace.  That was good for my total time of 2:54:53, well under my 3-3:15 goal.

So I went in with some attainable goals and with an excellent performance wanted to try and break 3 hours.  Even with the fast swim conditions I still managed to beat that by 5 minutes, so if the bay was choppy I feel like I had enough gas regardless to make that time.  My splits and rankings were:

Overall: 2:54:53  499/1524 overall (33rd percentile), 97 of 226 in my age group

Swim: 29:32  257th overall (17th percentile)

Bike: 1:04:50 (16.7 mph) 650th overall (43rd percentile)

Run: 1:11:32 (8:57 pace) 733rd overall (48th percentile)

Obviously my run is still the weak spot and has the most room for improvement, so speed work here we come.  If I can do this race again you better believe that I will, it was one to stamp in the memory bank.