Race Recap: Vineman 70.3

If racing is a celebration of training, then my time at Vineman on Sunday was one big 6-hour, 34-minute, 54-second party. It seems cold to say that the day was all just execution — where’s the drama in that? where are the crazy highs and lows? — but the number one thing I felt throughout the day was well-prepared.

And what that preparation got me was a bunch of times faster than the ones I thought I could pull off. I spent most of the day with a big dumb grin on my face. Part of it, I’m sure, is the sheer joy of the automatic PR, the fact that as long as I finished, I’d be doing something I could barely conceive of a year ago. But most of it was a confidence I don’t think I’ve ever felt before in racing — that I’d done everything I could to be ready, and now all I had to do was do it.

I don’t know where that confidence came from, but I’m glad it was there, because from the moment I got to Santa Rosa on Friday night, I felt calm. My phone was full of text messages with other people’s nerves, and I kept expecting my own to kick in at any minute, but they never did. On Saturday, we hit up some Sonoma County favorites: Flying Goat for coffee, Arrigoni’s for sandwiches and snark (overheard: “What gluten-free options do you have?” “Well. All of our sandwiches come on bread.”), Powell’s for candy. I went to the athlete meeting, got my wristband and packet, set up my T2 stuff, and lazed around the hotel until it was time for dinner with Michaela, Courtney, and friends. (And pros! Michaela’s post about chatting with a pro is fantastic.)

I started trying to put myself to bed around 10 p.m., and with the exception of one wake-up, I slept solidly until the alarm went off at 5:30. I picked up my friend from his hotel, drove back to mine to load the car, and Pete drove us both to Guerneville. By chance, we ran into my parents while looking for parking, so all of us walked to Johnson’s Beach together, and then it was up into transition and down to the water.

Swim — 40:18

I was in wave 17 of 23, starting at 8 a.m. The waves were split six minutes apart, but from the time we were called to get in to the time the horn went off, it felt like an hour. The water was warmer than the air — 70-ish degrees, warm enough that steam was rising off the top — and I was glad I’d chosen the sleeveless wetsuit even given the chilly morning.

In my practice swims, I’d always started toward the far bank of the river, so I found a spot on that side toward the front. I’m not sure how many people were in the wave — 50? 75? Vineman split up many of the traditional age groups to even out the waves, so I was with women 30-32 — but we were really spread out, and I felt very little contact getting through the start.

I was waiting for the first shallow bit with the plants sticking out over the surface, just after the bridge, but I never found it — I must have been just slightly to one side. In fact, I never encountered any particularly shallow spots; after the turnaround, I touched the riverbed a couple of times, but mostly I was able to swim normally. I saw people ahead of me dolphin-diving once or twice and spotted some people walking at the edges, but it seemed like most of my wave was swimming most of the time.

I felt like I was doing a good job staying in the thick of my wave — which is not something I’ve always done. I caught my first purple cap from the wave in front maybe halfway through the outbound leg, and it took longer than that for the first dark green cap from the wave behind to catch me. The river is narrow enough that I honestly wasn’t doing a whole lot of sighting, other than just making sure I was rounding the buoys on the right, and I know that benefited me.

The one tricky part was figuring out a line to the swim exit, and I swam more of the last .2 with my head up than I wish I had. I just couldn’t quite get a handle on the angle of the exit ramp. I saw people start to stand up but I kept swimming as long as possible, then picked my way over the rocks as quickly as I could and got over the ramp.

I was shocked, honestly, to see 40:xx as my time. I felt like I’d had a good swim relative to my normal open-water swims and, from what I could tell, relative to my age group — but that would be a good time for me for that distance in the pool. That said, swimming in a current-less, shallow, narrow river is probably about as close as it gets to swimming in a pool, so I suppose it makes sense.

T1 – 7:07

I mean, yeah, that took forever. I’d never done a two-transition-area race before, and I probably should have practiced shoving all my junk into a plastic bag with haste. I also walked the whole way out of transition through the sandy parking lot. I wasn’t doing myself any favors on time, but my footing wasn’t awesome and I’d long ago decided it wouldn’t be worth running my bike out, especially if I was going to walk the little gravelly hill out of transition …

Bike – 3:24:50

… which I did. And then there was still some confusion about who was going to mount where and so I kept walking, up and around until the road was flat. It probably took an extra minute on either side of the timing mat, but two minutes weren’t going to make a difference in my day.

As soon as I got settled on River Road, my first order of business was food. I had a Gu ripped open and ready to go, and I nibbled on it for a couple of miles. So glad I did, because as before, I didn’t manage to get any food down during any of the especially jostle-y parts of Westside, and I didn’t get fully on my regular food-drink-salt pill schedule until an hour into the ride. I was nervous about the tight right turn off River — perhaps the only thing about this course that qualifies as “technical” — and I’m still surprised by how steep and precarious it feels, because on foot it doesn’t look like much. But the people around me heeded the warnings to slow down and we went into the turn single-file, which made me feel much more secure.

After that, I just rode. And rode. And ate. And rode. I sang to myself. I kept an eye out for friends — Ron caught me on River, I caught Lisa on Westside, and Cristina and I leapfrogged for much of the ride. I kept clicking off miles under 4:00 and knew I must be averaging over 16 mph. I think I previewed the course exactly the right amount: my two rides were enough to always know what was coming next but not enough to plunge me into boredom.

We got so lucky with the weather. It stayed foggy and gray until I was going past the Dry Creek General Store around mile 25, when I started seeing streaks of blue peeking out over the vineyards. By the time we hit the Canyon descent, it was bright and sunny, and that’s one of those moments I’ll always remember from this race — flying down that hill, warm sun and mountains and vineyards all around me, feeling happy and strong.

My obsessive over-planning of snacks paid off a handful of times. My bento box ejected my baggie of Shot Bloks (I’d only eaten one of the six!) and the last bit of my Picky Bar as I went over various potholes, and my extra Gu must have gotten lost somewhere during the swim or in transition. But I’d stuffed more Shot Bloks and a Fig Newton into the zippered compartment, so I had quite the rolling buffet. Every time I started to feel tired or sore or angry, I thought, “Let’s throw some food at that problem,” and I did, and it worked great.

My saddle started to bug me around mile 30, and I stood up a bunch on the flatter bits to stretch. Between that and the little climbs leading up to Chalk Hill, I kept waiting for my speed to drop — and it did, but only a little. The way the aid station before Chalk Hill was set up, I didn’t even realize we’d made the turn until I was hitting the sharp incline that serves as a warning shot for the real climb. The hill itself was kind of a mess — people walking to the far right, then people passing them but riding slowly in the middle, then people who were stronger climbers trying to pass them, and the few really strong climbers all the way on the outside flirting with the yellow line. As a (relatively) stronger climber (in this field, on this hill), it was tough to get enough open space to climb at my pace while also not blocking people coming up even faster.

But then it was over, with a short downhill and then a few little bumps on the part of the course I hate. I’d packed a goody bag — a handful of cherry cola and watermelon candies — for this stretch, and every time I started to feel rough, I thanked myself for my foresight and ate a treat. As we came into Windsor, a few cars got aggressive and I did a little talking back, but mostly it was smooth sailing all the way to the high school. After Chalk Hill, I was pretty sure I could come in under 3:30; then I had a stretch where I wasn’t sure and picked up the pace again; then I knew I was going to make it and relaxed for the final miles. I waved to the goats, coasted through the turns, tried to stretch my legs, and finally spotted the high school roof and Pete and my parents cheering near the bike in. I couldn’t believe I was done.

T2 – 9:38

When I got off the bike and stood up, the backs of my butt and legs — basically where my hamstrings and glutes connect — were in searing pain. The same thing happened in Napa with my old saddle, and I’d gotten through the run there fine. I knew I could do it again, but those first few steps were not pleasant. I took my time walking my bike a long way — my Garmin recorded almost a quarter mile! — to my T2 spot and spent a few more minutes stretching once I got there. Eventually, I dumped the last of my bike water bottle into my handheld, stuffed food and the contact lens case I’d loaded up with salt pills into my pockets, and took some long steps to stretch out more as I headed toward the run course.

Run – 2:13:01

I hit the run out and started to jog, and I immediately realized that running felt a lot better than walking. It was a relief, and as I ran through the enthusiastic spectators in the first half-mile of the course — the only part where crowds were allowed — I was choking back happy tears. I knew I was well ahead of my goal, and for the first time, I also knew I was going to stay there. “You’re doing this!” is what kept popping into my head, and I’d smile and then start to cry and then remind myself to keep it under control because there was still a long way to go.

So, I ran. I walked the aid stations as I planned to, and went through every sprinkler and got sprayed by every garden hose, and in between, I ran. When I went over the timing mat at mile 6 at just under an hour, I knew I was right on pace; little did I know that the online tracker claimed the mat was at mile 6.6, and Pete and my parents briefly thought I was going to pull out a sub-2 half!

The high point of the run was probably the archway of misters at the start of the La Crema winery loop. The low point was absolutely the out-and-back on a boring road right after the loop. By that point, I was getting hot — and I know, I was so lucky, it could have been so much worse, but it was still full sun and 80 degrees — and I took a little more time at the aid stations to grab water and ice (where there was still ice; several aid stations had had theirs melt already). I dropped a Nuun tab in my handheld bottle around mile 9, but the heat and fizziness somehow combined to build up pressure in the bottle, and half the water went shooting out across the street. I could only laugh, but it still felt like a very long way to the next aid station and a refill.

I was tired, absolutely, and getting majorly chafed from all the water I was dumping on myself, but I felt weirdly … awesome? I was talking to the people around me, and keeping an eye out for friends, and while I wasn’t moving particularly fast, I never doubted that I could keep running. Non-volunteer spectators were only allowed on the last 1.5 miles of the course, so hitting the crowds was a big milestone. Then it was 10 more minutes of running, then five. Then I spotted my friend Ron again — he’d just dyed his hair red, and I’d been making wine jokes ever since, saying he’d gone Cabernet or Zinfandel for Vineman — and as I came up behind him, I yelled, “Hey, Pinot Noir, you coming with me?” He laughed but waved me on, and then I was at the last intersection before the high school, and then I was turning into the chute.

The chute wound through the parking lot, and I really wasn’t sure how much further I had to go, but I knew I had the dumbest smile on my face. A friend called out and I smiled even bigger — then Cristina was at the fence cheering — then it was Pete and my parents — and then it was the finish line. The announcer said my name, and I threw my arms up, and I was a half-ironman finisher. Total time: 6:34:54.

After

I ran into Layla at the finish and she was eating watermelon, so my next move was clear. I made it over to the food tent and piled a plate with watermelon slices and pasta salad, grabbed some water and chocolate milk, and looked for friends. Eventually, I slowly made my way back to T2 to gather my stuff, found my T1 bag (full of ants who’d gone after my throwaway bottle of Nuun-water, which I clearly should have actually thrown away), did some expo shopping, and walked back to the car. Walking away from the high school got us through the worst of the traffic, and within 45 minutes, I was eating nachos and drinking beer at Lagunitas in Petaluma.

I have more to say that’s all feelings-y, but this post is long enough. I’ll just say that when I look back on the day, there’s not much I would change, and that’s a pretty exciting way to feel after my first 70.3. There are things I could do better, places where I can build on this. But my pie-in-the-sky goal back in April was to hold 16 mph on the bike at Vineman, and I did. My motivation all year was to finish this race under seven hours, and I did. And knowing I could do this at all — that the girl who started running at 25 and learned to ride a bike at 29 could finish a half-ironman at 31 — is the craziest and most awesome thing, period.

Vineman Course Preview Day 1

When I finally got home on Saturday, after the drive up and the drive down and the ride and the other ride and the wetsuit that smelled like feet and the bar quesadilla and the mud clumped in my cleats and the heavenly Cherry Coke whose mere promise had kept me going for hours, after the shower and the beer and the other beer and the misty walk home, I tweeted the only thing I could think to say:

Do you know how long it takes to bike 70 miles? I didn't. The answer is: all f'n day. (And it was a blast.)

— Kimra (@kimretta) June 23, 2013

Days after my first attempt at the swim and bike courses of Vineman, that still covers what comes to mind when I think about last Saturday. It was a long day — a longer day than I ever would have guessed when I saw the training schedule. (Vineman will be longer.) And it was a hot day, hotter than I think any of us were prepared for. (Vineman might be hotter.) But it was also a delight, and I hope Vineman can be that, too.

We started in the river, sweltering in neoprene while we got our instructions. My race-day attire remains up in the air, but I wanted to see how my regular wetsuit felt. I expected to be grossly overheated, but I felt fine once we got moving. And yes, I was grateful for the extra loft and protection as we went through the shallow parts, one maybe 200 yards after the start and one at the turnaround. I was also grateful for my short arms; I never had to alter my stroke, even when I felt sure I’d touch bottom. One thing I didn’t expect: plants in my face! In the shallower parts, the plants that grow up from the riverbed are tall enough to stick out over the top of the water, and for about 10 strokes it felt like swimming through the top of a cornfield.

My butt is one of those butts.

I’d been swimming with a friend I know is faster on the way out, but I think I was getting a bit of an assist from the current, because after the turnaround, she surged ahead and I never caught back up. Still, according to my Garmin, I finished just over 1.1 miles in just under 40 minutes, and if I could swim the full course anywhere in the low 40s on race day, I’d be thrilled.

We had a generous amount of time after the swim to prepare for our ride, and while at first I was grateful, I slowly realized it meant we were going to be riding at the hottest part of the day. It must have been 11 a.m. before we rolled out, and 80+ degrees in the shade. (It went on to hit 96.) Our coach told us to drink water generously; he’d be following us around for refills.

The ride didn’t start out well. My jitters about clipping in around a large group meant I started at the back of the line and moved slowly through Guerneville, and then the small group I was with took a wrong turn and rode a couple of steep hills until finally hitting a gravel driveway and realizing we were lost. We had directions that referenced road signs we never saw, and it wasn’t until mile 10, when we caught up to the last of the bigger group, that I was sure we weren’t riding the course backwards. In the confusion, I’d also gotten way behind on eating and drinking, and I could tell that was contributing to my crankiness, so I started doubling up on food and drinks right before the one-hour mark.

The next stretch had some nasty potholes — potholes actually understates it; it’s more like broken ground that feels like riding over a tortoise’s shell — and a few little hills but also our first water refill stop, for which I was wildly grateful. Just a few miles up the road we turned onto Dry Creek Road, and I occupied myself with picking out wineries I’d visited when Pete lived in the area and trying to remember what wines they made.

Our second water stop was right around 25 miles, and I finished my Roctane bottle and refilled — and then drank most of that and refilled again. I should have done that about three more times, because that would be the last water for 30 miles.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to be, especially not on a day that hot. It wasn’t anyone’s intention. But the heat caused problems for people who weren’t expecting to have problems — sickness, blown-out tires — and the SAG vehicle had to do its main job of picking up struggling riders. So after mile 25, it was anyone’s guess where the truck and its water would show up next — and I never caught it.

It was OK, at first. I had finally caught up with a friend, and we chatted and kept a good pace on the long, straight stretch after Geyserville. Somewhere in there I dropped my water bottle, stopped to rescue it, and decided to dump in the rest of my water from my backup bottle and add some Pineapple Skratch, which I’d bought on a whim and was, in that moment, the best thing I’d ever tasted.

Around 40 miles, things started getting dicey. I was down to about half of my water, and I knew I still had the course’s only major climb to come. But surely SAG would be around here somewhere for a refill, right? No dice. Chalk Hill was a slog — and was the first time I’ve ever thought, “How much longer can I go without water before I have to call SAG?” Two big sips left for the last 10 miles.

Thankfully, they were downhill; thankfully, I could ride them with friends, who also confirmed that they hadn’t seen water for miles. We got each other through it, telling stories and taking turns in the lead and convincing ourselves there was going to be water at the high school, there would have to be water at the high school, obviously there was water at the high school. I drank my last sip of water just as the high school came into view — 56 miles down, my longest ride to date.

And yes, there was water at the high school — though my friend and I wandered around for at least 10 minutes too stupid to find it and had to ask more than once for directions to the fountains. I have no idea how long we were there — half an hour? — but we finally admitted that it was time to get back on the bikes and ride back to Guerneville.

For some reason when I’d seen the two options for this workout — 56 miles with a car at either end of the route, or a 70-mile round-trip — I’d never questioned doing the 70. What’s another 15 miles? Well, for one thing, it’s 15 miles longer than the longest ride I’d ever done. It’s also, when moving at a decent clip on streets with some traffic, an hour. Why I never questioned whether after almost 4 hours on a bike I’d really want to sign up for a 5th, I have no idea, but I cursed it in that moment. The road back had a handful of little rollers that felt like mountains by that point, and my butt no longer wanted to be anywhere in the vicinity of my seat, and I did more coasting than peddling, and the road was a mix of giant potholes and bumpy, tarred creases. By the time our coach drove by calling “five more miles!” I had no positivity left and sent him a death glare severe enough he apparently texted my carpool buddy to warn her about my mood.

But oh, when we rolled into Guerneville at last! I have not felt that kind of exhausted elation since some of the longer runs of marathon training. “How are you?” “I’m not sure. I might be dead. Am I dead? Is this heaven?” “Are you going to run?” “No, I’m going to puke and then drink a margarita.” It took me 10 minutes to take off one shoe. I thought about running, but only in the vague way that one might contemplate what it would be like to fly. I thought about standing in the river, but it seemed really far away. I ultimately decided to go to the bar with my teammates, mostly because I could drive there. And there, everything was amazing, in an exceptionally loopy way. Lots of sweaty hugs, and funny faces in photos, and the $2.50 quesadilla (chosen off a food menu of “quesadillas, corn dogs, and bloody marys”) that will forever go down as one of my life’s greatest moments of having expectations exceeded.

In the end, that stupid, sun-drunk, goofy, give-me-all-the-salt, holy-shit-did-we-just-do-that feeling stayed with me for all the rest of Saturday, and even carried me through 11 rickety miles on Sunday. And that’s what keeps me coming back to this sport.

Some assorted notes on the course that I don’t want to forget:

• The first 30 miles trend gradually uphill. It’s a flat course on the whole, but the trend until Canyon is ever so slightly up. Do not feel discouraged if it feels like you are riding uphill sometimes, because you are. Almost all of the climbing is done before Chalk Hill.
• The road conditions really are pretty gnarly. I’d heard it, I believed it, but I was still surprised at just how bad some stretches were. The worst of it seemed to be in the first 20-ish miles.
• The 10 miles between the two climbs — from Canyon to Chalk Hill — are mostly flat and should be a place where I can pick up the pace on race day. It’s also unshaded for long stretches, and we had a bit of a headwind.
• The big Chalk Hill climb doesn’t start until several miles onto Chalk Hill Road. There are a couple of rollers before that, but no, they are not just Chalk Hill “starting early.” It’s legitimately at mile 45.
• Chalk Hill is steep but no worse than an Orinda “Bear.” Maybe a 4-to-5-minute climb.
• After Chalk Hill, it’s all downhill to Windsor High. What with having to obey stoplights, I didn’t get a good sense of what that would do to my overall pace, but I have to imagine it’s only good things.
• My Garmin thinks I hit 37 mph somewhere on the course. If true, that’s … awesome? Terrifying?
• It’s a beautiful course. Remember that when things get tough. Remember to look around.

The First Bike Commute

I rode my bike to work on Wednesday.

For most of the 11 miles — 5 there, 6 home, the variance attributable to one-way streets and my own fears — I felt like the slowest, scared-est rider in San Francisco. And I probably was, is the thing. I don’t think a lot of people who bike commute are afraid of it. I tend to encounter two types: those who ride to work near-daily like it’s no big deal and those who think only a damn fool would put themselves in the middle of that mess. I don’t encounter a lot of people who are scared but do it anyway.

“Scared But Did It Anyway” is kind of my middle name, though, so there I was, biking my damn self to work.

I’m sure I was the person the other riders couldn’t wait to get around. As every stoplight turned from red to green, I’d get swarmed from both sides — what felt like dozens of people (but was probably two or three) flowing around me around me like waves while I sat there like a dumb log. Stop signs were even worse, because who on a bike stops at stop signs in this city? The slowest, scared-est rider in San Francisco, that’s who. But I poked along; I’d get there eventually.

(Also, I probably looked like an asshole, what with my clip shoes and my road bike and my utter inability to ride it like a normal San Francisco biking human.)

I saw people swerve through traffic and cut in front of cars and dart between the right-turning taxi and the bus stop. And I was jealous of them, because I would love to have that confidence. There were a few times someone came up a little close, or swerved unexpectedly, or did something that a normal rider could handle with ease but that threw me into a sweaty panic, and I wanted to say, “Can you imagine what it would be like to feel terrified right now?” But I kept it to myself, except for a few “ohgodohgodohgod“s that I didn’t realize other people could hear until pedestrians or taxi drivers turned to me with bemused looks on their faces.

I spent a lot of time cataloging all the new and unanticipated ways this could end poorly. Culligan Man slinging massive bottles of water out of his truck to his waiting colleague stationed in the bike lane? Not an obstacle I’d considered. Nor had I thought through what happens when 15 riders in a line have to choose whether to swerve left or right around a discarded sweatshirt. I almost took a break on the way home because my heart was racing (funnily enough, the second I turned onto to my street, I wasn’t even out of breath), and I fear-sweat through all my clothes.

And yet: I made it, there and back. I now know what the road is like (smoother than expected) and where the hitches in the route are (the Folsom bike lane moves toward the center of the road before the freeway onramp; Howard gets less miserable after 8th). And I have to admit it made me proud: doing this thing I never ever thought I’d be able to do, getting around the city by the power of my own legs (and Penelope’s wheels), on my own schedule. My panic-filled stop-and-start was hardly the idyllic “fresh air and freedom to start the day!” cry of many a bike commuter, but it was weirdly exhilarating.

I’ll do it again, but I think once a week is going to be plenty.

Notes for next time:

• No, seriously, I fear-sweat through all my clothes. I’m going to have to figure out how to carry an extra top to work.
• On the topic of carrying stuff: I bought a small Rickshaw messenger bag as a “now not being able to hold your stuff is no excuse not to bike places” gift in December, and I continue to be shocked by how much it holds. I had my wallet, phone, and keys; my U-lock and my cable lock; a sweater; shoes; my work notebook; and some food and drink (my lunch in a small container and my water bottle), and the bag closed just fine. I can pare down in the future — I’ll use the U-lock in my office’s bike room, but I won’t use the cable, and I can keep a water bottle at my desk rather than shuttle one back and forth — but it’s good to know how much I really can cram in there.
• Time-wise, the ride to work was no worse than my normal commute. (My train takes 30 minutes on a good day — 35 with my coffee stop — and on a bad day it can approach an hour. This took about 40 minutes.) The ride home was more like 50 minutes, owing to a longer route, more stoplights, and a general uphill slant.
• Incidentally, Google Maps claims I could ride to my office in 31 minutes, but that would require riding down Market Street, which violates my Never Ride Market Street policy. I’m fine taking the longer way around and not picturing my own death by trolley.
• I’m trying to figure out how to combine this with a longer ride, because while 11 miles and over an hour of riding over the course of the day isn’t nothing, it’s also not exactly a triathlon-simulating workout. I’m thinking I could either a) stash a bag at work the night before, bike a longer route ending up at work, grab the bag from the office, and shower at the nearby gym, or b) ride a loop that ends by my house, briefly stop and grab a bag from there, and bike to the gym to shower. Option b takes less planning, so that’ll probably be the winner by default.
• The whole time, I kept thinking of that scene from Girls where Hannah says “I’m really scared, all the time” and Adam tells her everyone’s scared and she says “I’m more scared than most people are when they say that they’re scared. I’m like the most scared person who’s alive” and Adam says “Well, you don’t have the right to be.” I’m just not going to read too much into that.

Thanks, Internet

I’m feeling gushy about the internet.

Over the weekend, I did two fantastic workouts — workouts that I wouldn’t have done without people I met by typing into this little box and other boxes like it.

Saturday it was nearly 10 miles of Presidio trails with Alyssa, catching up on life as the early morning drizzle floated away and left us with views of the sparkling bay.

Sunday it was 50 (fifty!) miles on my bike through Pete’s old stomping grounds in western Sonoma County with Michaela and her friend Karen — neither of whom I knew before the ride. Not that that mattered; it turns out there are few better ways to get to know someone than over four hours of chatty riding, especially when there’s farmland to gush over and burritos to eat and a scavenger hunt to interrupt and a teepee to duck into for some reason.

Neither of these workouts was something I should, frankly, be able to do with ease right now. The ride was more than 10 miles longer than my previous longest, which itself was a mere week earlier; the run was my first time even approaching double digits since the Walnut Creek half. And yet in both cases, it took me by surprise when all of a sudden, I was back at my car, a little confused about where the previous hours had gone.

I’m an introvert by nature. I’ve always liked the idea of having workout buddies, but in practice, I’m terrible at outreach. I’m not the one to strike up a conversation with the person who’s always next to me in yoga class or the woman I see weekly in the pool. (I spent probably three weeks trying to figure out how to talk to the other pool runner at my gym before she finally just pulled up next to me and said, “Training for something?”)

But when the person on the other end of the interaction is a blogger, or a Twitter-er, or a Dailymile friend, it’s a little easier, somehow. We know something about each other’s paces and preferences. The introduction is done already, with characters and pictures on a screen instead of words I need to babble out loud.

So thanks, little internet boxes, for helping me get over my fears of other people — especially riding with other people. I’d see pictures or hear stories about little groups riding together and having long, deep conversations, and I just couldn’t understand how it happened. Like, physically, how? How do you hear each other? How do you stay close enough together without crashing? (I was always the caboose of my tri group rides last year, so this was never an issue.) Turns out, as long as you talk pace beforehand and plan on some places to regroup, it’s not that tough.

Actually, it can be pretty amazing.

The Biggest Little Things

Progress is sometimes hard to spot, but this weekend, I got one of those rare tangible signs.

As “workouts” go, it barely registers: six miles on a bike, three out and three back.

As a symbol of growth, though, I’ve rarely seen bigger.

A year ago, I didn’t own Penelope yet. I had barely started bike shopping. I was scared — really scared — to even ride out of a parking lot. I couldn’t imagine yet that I’d ride up the big hill at Wildflower, or make it across the Golden Gate Bridge, or climb 1,000 feet of Legion of Honor repeats before work.

And I really couldn’t imagine doing what I did on Saturday, which was this: Get on my bike in the dark, turn on my lights, and ride in traffic to get to a friend’s party.

Big whoop, right? Using my bike for everyday transportation.

But that’s a thing I haven’t done much, a thing I still don’t say I do. My favorite routes are basically closed to traffic; I love triathlon biking because it feels protected. City riding is still a different beast, and city riding at night has been a threshold rarely crossed.

But taking the bus was going to take forever, and driving was just dumb. So we rode.

It was a cool, crisp night, and I’ve rarely felt the park so still. I was slow, and cautious, and I unclipped a good half-block before I really needed to every single time — but I made it there and back, under my own power.

Under my own power. That says it all.

I am not as fearful as I was a year ago. I’m stronger. I trust myself more. I still get scared, and I still have limits, but I’m also less terrified of what might happen if I push against them.

All this from a little six-mile ride?

Well, yes. But there wasn’t anything little about it.

Race Recap: Berlin Marathon

For all of the build-up and anticipation and training, the Berlin Marathon is one big 42-kilometer blur. That’s something I don’t think I expected about marathons before running one: how so many moments would fade into each other and become one amorphous mass of neighborhoods and water stops and discarded gel packs. Did I high-five those kids at KM 20 or 32? Where was the neighborhood where everyone was banging on pots and pans?

But while it’s still somewhat fresh — and before this plane lands in Munich and deposits me straight into four days of beer and pretzels — I’m going to try to remember.

Pre-race
The race started at 9, and being in the last corral meant I wouldn’t start till some time after, so we got to sleep in by race-day standards and left our hotel a little after 7:30. It was chilly (I was grateful for my arm warmers and for our 2.5K walk to warm up) but also cloudless, and I was worried about how hot and sunny it might get.

We walked through the Brandenburg Gate and saw part of what we thought was the finish, then made our way toward bag check. We were only checking one bag, under Pete’s number, and that led to one of the only organizational fails of the whole weekend: his booth was actually in a row set apart from the main booths with no path through. We (and about 50 other people) ended up squeezing through a precarious break between two tents and got the bag in just before the 8:30 cutoff. Pete headed to his corral and I got in a porta potty line, where I spent the next 28 minutes fretting and staring at my watch before finally getting my turn. I headed to Corral H, where all 4:15+ and first-time marathoners were, just as the elite race started.

H got its own start around 9:20. There were three Americans in front of me who kept saying “I can’t believe we’re here!” I was having a hard time fathoming what was about to happen, so I kept repeating “You love this city. You love this sport.” Just, I guess, trying to remind myself how and why I’d ended up there.

start to 5K
The start wrapped around both sides of the big statue in the middle of Berlin’s Tiergarten. I was on the left and watched in awe as we split from the right half, then merged back together – a huge sea of runners. I expected to run for a while without music, but after the immediate thrill of the start, the crowd really thinned out — especially on my side of the road; it was one of the quieter spots of the day. So I turned on my playlist somewhere before 2KM (the first marker I saw) and kept it on for most of the race, though I paused some for bands and frequently for crowds.

I was focusing on running easy and my watch was all over the place on instant pace, so I decided to wait till I got a steady stream of believable data and then flip over to average pace, which I think happened around 5K.

Random snippets from the first 5K: there was a giant Adidas installation at 2K spewing red confetti; I don’t remember any bands; it was really, really sunny. I spent a lot of time looking for the coffee shop where we’d watched the inline skating race on Saturday but never saw it.

Also around 5K was the first big water stop. It was AWFUL. Berlin uses plastic cups, and when they get tossed on the ground and stepped on, they splinter, and they’re slippery and bits fly up everywhere. I eventually learned how to pick up my feet and get through it, but I honestly dreaded every single water stop after that.

5K-10K
I don’t remember a whole lot from this bit, except I crossed the 10K timing mat exactly on the pace I’d told my parents to expect (I crossed at 1:06 and had given them a range of 1:03-1:08). I thought I might see them around 6 or 7K but it turns out they’d gone ahead (which makes sense — Pete and I were already probably 45 minutes apart at that point between pace and start time).

We also had a few stretches with shade, which made me realize just how much I was loving every single second of the race with shade (and how little I was enjoying the sun). Luckily, the second part of the course was a lot less exposed, but at this point I was just reminding myself to take advantage of every tree-covered stretch.

10K-15K
I remember being sad when I got to 15K, because it felt like I’d gone more than nine miles. (Something about having kilometer markers messed with my head, especially in this stretch — with 42 bits to tick off, instead of 26, I was constantly aware of where I was and exactly how much further there was to go.) My Rocktane kicked in shortly after that, though, and that perked me up.

15K-20K
It was in this stretch that I realized I was going to need a bathroom stop, soon. They seemed to be coming every few K, so I decided I’d try to hold out for 20. I was still running well and on pace, but I knew that wasn’t going to last if I didn’t stop.

I spotted a guy in a 2009 SF Half Marathon shirt and tried to catch up to him for probably a solid 4K. But when I stopped at the porta potty just after the KM 20 checkpoint, I lost him (as well as two guys with yellow flags who I’d assumed were 4:45 pacers, but considering that I finished ahead of them, they might have been just guys running in funny outfits).

My watch had been reading around a 10:22/mile average till the bathroom stop, but the time I spent there clicked it up to 10:40, and I never got it back down. Hard to tell because my watch laps are in miles, but I think I lost 4 or 5 minutes at that stop. I knew I was trading a slightly better time for a more comfortable race, but I was willing to deal with that.

Oh: there was no toilet paper in any porta potty the whole race, including the one I used before the start. I had two tissues with me, and I was rationing them.

20K-25K
So, I crossed 20K at 2:10, which I was thrilled with, but I didn’t get to the halfway point at 21K until 2:20. That kind of sucked because I knew at that point that I wasn’t going to wildly exceed my expectations. But: OK. First marathon, just want to finish, etc.

Race math kicked in around here. I had 5K to 25K, and from 25K it would only be an hour or so to my last checkpoint at 35K. And from 35K, it was just a little jaunt to the finish. I could handle that.

My stomach wasn’t feeling great (and never did again until, like, Monday) but I got a great boost from three things in this stretch: First, I saw my parents somewhere around 22-23K. I heard my name and I screamed and waved and attempted to jump up and down, which I bet did not look much like jumping. Second, I remembered I had salt packets in my shirt pocket, and I pulled over to walk one of the longer aid stations and take one. (By this point I was briefly walking at every second or third stop to refill my handheld anyway.) That salt saved my race. I’d taken margarita shot bloks at 1:45 into the race, but they did NOTHING compared to this straight-up fast food salt. And third, we went through one of my favorite stretches of the course, in the southwestern part of the city, where it seemed like entire streets had rolled out of bed to cheer.

25K-30K
Despite the salt, I again knew I’d be happier with another bathroom stop, but it wasn’t particularly urgent, so I decided to get to 30K first and stop at the bathroom with the shortest line after that.

I think it was around here that we went past a big wall fountain sponsored by a drinking water company and some fire trucks with their hoses spraying us. I also definitely high-fived some kids. And I think a water stop with gel packets was in this stretch, which was memorable because it made the road all gooey.

30K-35K
The 30K bathroom stop took FOREVER. There were only two people in line and one ditched shortly after I got there — which probably should have been my sign that this would not be so quick after all, but I stuck it out. Again, I was sad to lose the time but happy to feel better.

Before that stop, I’d been running awesomely for probably 20 or 30 minutes — feeling strong, passing people, picking up a bit of the speed I’d lost. I hoped I could get it back and cruise in for the finish, and while I never felt that good again until right before the end, I also never had a truly low moment.

I also remember a super terrifying water stop around here, where the road was noticeably slick for several hundred meters with plastic cups and Powerade.

35K-38K
From the second I crossed the 35K time pad, I was counting down to the 37K marker. How many times had I run 5K? I was enjoying the race, and I wasn’t wishing for it to end, but I *knew* that when I hit 37K, I would be able to finish. Also, given my total time, I thought that if I hit that mark at 4:15, I could finish under 4:45, which sounded good.

Aaaand I never saw the marker. Pete didn’t either, so maybe it wasn’t there, or else it was in a very odd location. This was the closest I came to hitting a wall: though I still felt OK physically, I let myself give in mentally. “Well, you can’t finish in 4:45, but you could basically walk the rest of the race and break 5. So, why NOT take one more potty break and walk this last big water stop?” And that’s exactly what I did: quick break in a bathroom with no line, quick walk for some Powerade and my second salt packet (which once again immediately relieved a side stitch; I will race every race with backup salt packets from now on). I started jogging, resigning myself to having 5.5K or so to go … And then I saw the next marker. For 38K.

Well, OKAY then.

38K-finish
I’d inadvertently paused my watch at the last bathroom, so I didn’t know my race time. But I was sure that even though 4:45 wasn’t happening, 4:50 could. And really, at that moment, I felt awesome. I told myself it was only about 4 songs to 40K, so I should chill and ride it out with my music till then and then go kill the finish.

It was a weird moment. I realized most people around me were walking. I was one of the only ones running, and I mean, I’ve walked at mile 12 of a half-marathon before, so I know that feeling, but all I wanted was to get to 40KM and TAKE OFF. I also finally saw (and passed) the guy in the San Francisco shirt, and I wanted to thank him for pacing me for basically the whole middle of the race, but he veered off for water just as I caught up.

We were making a lot of turns in this part of the course, and I wasn’t ever quite sure where I was, but we suddenly were in front of some museums, and I knew we must be getting close. I started giggling, and I said out loud, “I OWN this shit.”

And then we turned and ran past an Adidas thing that was pouring gold confetti into the street, and I saw the final inflatable arch and the Brandenburg Gate. Which I was about to run through.

And I swear, I’m a crier anyway, but seeing that was one of the biggest emotional rushes I’ve ever had. I yelled “HOLY SHIT!” and then clapped my hand over my mouth, and I was laugh-crying and speeding up and honestly, I wish I could run that last 1.5K every day forever.

I went through the gate and mugged for every photographer (apparently to no end, because I have zero official photos of me running) and sprinted the 400 or so meters past the gate to the actual finish, looking up into the grandstands and listening to the crowd cheering. And then I was done. 4:48:08.

post-race
I really wanted someone to put the medal around my neck. Usually I just take them, but I wanted to be crowned or something, I guess, so I found a volunteer and bent down for my medal. They gave us plastic sheets instead of space blankets, and mine stuck to me and I ditched it not long after. I found volunteers giving out bags of food, got a finisher’s photo with my medal, and started walking to the family reunion area, because it was becoming clear that I wanted to stop moving and if I stopped before I got there it might be hours before I made it.

I also stopped in a porta potty along the way and it HAD TOILET PAPER. I actually said, out loud, “Oh my god, finally!” And then I took some extra and put it in my bag, because apparently I’d gone full hoarder.

I also had to stop and unlace my shoe to take off and return my timing chip, which took me forever, partly because I was talking to everyone around me about how much that sucked and couldn’t we just take a nap first?

I made it to family reunion and Pete and my parents got there a few minutes later. We took some pictures, found the Adidas tent to buy race shirts (I’d been too superstitious to get one at the expo), and shuffled the 2.5K to our hotel. On the way we saw some people running and Pete remarked that he didn’t understand how running was a thing anyone could ever do, which I heartily agreed with.

I didn’t feel terrible after. My feet and knees and right hip were worst, but not so much more than a normal long run. I’m sure the flat course helped. I didn’t want to eat for a while — it took me 45 minutes to eat half a roll from my finishers’ bag — but when I did, I was STARVING, and we went around the corner where I ate this.

Germany apparently hates ice so my substitute was running cold water on my legs in the shower. Getting out of bed on Monday morning was not fun, but we did some walking around the city and by Tuesday, when I’m writing this, I felt almost normal.

I have so much more to say about the race — about logistics, for anyone who might ever want to run this race, and about what I learned about myself and running over those 42 kilometers. But there’s beer to drink and sausages to eat and lord knows this is long enough already, so I will save that for when I’m back at a computer with a real keyboard.

For now: I’ll end with this picture Pete got at the finish. I’m in the middle of the three people in lime green, grinning like a fool.

22 Miles: I Fought for This Taper

On Saturday, the day I was supposed to run the longest run of this training cycle, I was plopped on the couch nursing a head cold. Well, the cold wasn’t really the issue — it was more the decongestant I took too close to bedtime on Friday and the resulting sleepless night. At 3 a.m., I thought maybe I could still pull off a run. At 4 a.m., I turned on my red-eye sleepytime playlist and tried to at least doze. At 5 a.m., I gave up and turned off my alarm. When I finally did sleep, it was a couch nap from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and hell if I was going to run 22 miles after that.

I’ll admit it: I cried. It was my longest run, my last long run, and I felt like missing it was somehow erasing everything I’d been working toward. (Rational Brain says: No, Kimra, you’re working toward Berlin. But Rational Brain was not on duty.)

At that point, my options seemed to be:

1) Hope I felt well enough to run Sunday, though I wouldn’t be 100%;
2) Run something this weekend but not 22; push 22 to late next Sunday, after a weekend of wedding festivities;
3) Run something this weekend but not 22; never run 22 and hope the 20 from two weeks ago would be enough.

Option (2) was OK, as I’m a designated driver for this wedding and thus won’t have that sort of recovery … but I still plan to stay up too late and dance too hard and even the 12 miles already scheduled for the day seems daunting. Option (3) felt awful; my 20-miler looked good on paper, but I was hurting during it and took a week off running after, so not really a confidence booster.

That left Sunday, which I knew would be rough and maybe risky, a gamble on how my recovering body would react to a stressful run. But after getting a good night of sleep (and officially banishing Mucinex from my life post-noon), I wanted to try. At any other point in training, I might have made a different decision, but knowing I was staring down taper, I went for it.

***

I’d had the basic route in my head for weeks: Run from home to the Ferry Building; follow the SF Marathon route over the Golden Gate Bridge; wind into Golden Gate Park; run a bit along the ocean; follow MLK back through the park; roll downhill home. (Originally, the plan was to end at Wise Sons Deli and celebrate the start of taper with pastrami, but that was more like 24 miles, and anyway, Pete did his 22 on Saturday and there would be something less gleeful about pounding a giant sandwich solo.)

I started late but didn’t care; in fact, I convinced myself, running at midday could be good prep for Berlin’s unpredictable weather. (This week: high of 81 on Monday; high of 59 on Thursday.) One thing I didn’t consider was all the stoplights in the first couple of miles, but things got better when I hit the Embarcadero, still early enough to miss the biggest crush of tourists.

My pace took a hit on the bigger hill up to the bridge, but no surprises. The bridge sidewalk was a bit like Frogger, but the gorgeous day kept me from getting too angry. I took a break at the Marin end to take a picture; it’s not every day (it’s barely any day) that San Francisco is this clear.

Itty bitty skyline

On the way back, I made a tactical error. It was time for food, but I’d drained my water, and I have a history of stomach cramps if I eat without, so I decided to get back across the bridge and eat later. I was sure there would be a fountain, but I couldn’t find one and ended up buying a $2.50 bottle smaller than my handheld. (Probably should have bought two.) After that stop, and some misguided parking lot navigation, it was well over 2:00 in run time before I ate my Shot Bloks. Still, I was on a long downhill, and I thought I’d be OK.

Except — what goes down in San Francisco must go up.

***

Behind on calories, I started up 25th Avenue and bonked. My first big bonk of training. I thought: This wasn’t so hard in the half! (That, self, turns out to be because the half route goes up 27th.) I was a little too grateful for stoplights and milked them a little too long. I walked some. I started thinking things like, “Does this run even count?”

I crossed 13.1 and noted that this still wasn’t my slowest half-marathon.

I crossed 14 with a mile about 2 minutes off my goal pace.

I was listening to the pain-themed Radiolab right about then. Very funny, playlist-making self.

I spotted a water fountain and took my sweet time refilling my bottle.

I headed into the park on a trail and spotted pink up ahead. The end of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day. More Frogger.

A bathroom stop, more precautionary than necessary. There was a line, short but guilt-inducing: stopping again? I fished out my backup Nuun tab, looked at my watch, and made a plan. I could get home by 3.

My next mile was the fastest of the day.

***

And then I turned for the hill home. Three miles up, two miles down. Ugh, that hill. I walked a little in each of those first three miles — about 10 minutes running to two minutes walking. Funny: Though slow, those were my three most consistently paced miles.

At the start of the Panhandle, I was sure I’d make it all the way to 22. It was literally all downhill from there, and almost all in the shade. And … a whole mile short? I swear I stuck to the route I mapped, other than maybe a .25 detour when I ran out of sidewalk going into the park. And I didn’t pause when I walked. But my watch was stubbornly at 19.5.

Hmm. OK.

At least it kept my mind occupied: Add on the extra mile? Where? Was I actually running 23 miles? (I don’t think so, but I also haven’t figured out where I “lost” the mile.) Could I be trusted to keep running if I passed my apartment? I ultimately decided to loop the last segment of the Panhandle, deducing by run-math that that would get me close enough.

Three Shot Bloks down the hatch. Pause at the end of the Panhandle, cross back to where I’d just come from. Now I was really heading home.

***

I did run past the apartment, in the end, but just to get to 22.1. Just to be sure.

I felt OK as long as I was moving, but when I got inside, I forgot how to sit down. My glutes were burning. (Which I noted with some pride — Hey, glutes, nice of you to fire — but also, I couldn’t figure out how to sit down.) I tried legs-up-the-wall, which was more like legs-three-quarters-of-the-way-up-the-bookcase-OK-that’s-good-enough, and Pete brought me a smoothie, and I slowly MYRTL’d and hydrated and eventually plugged in my watch to prove it.

I ran 22 miles. It was damn hard. And it was done.

***

Minutae, as if that wasn’t minute enough:

• Final stats: 22.1 miles in 3:57:28, a 10:44/mile average. I was right at a 10:22 average until the bonk and never really got back on track after that, but I ran solidly from miles 19-22.
• But: There was a lot of stopping — for stoplights, for water refills, for the picture on the bridge, for the bathroom, for checking the route. I didn’t pause my watch when I walked, but I did pause when I stopped, out of instinct rather than pride — but it was my pride that got me down about it: Sure, I’d “run” 22 miles, but what about all the time I wasn’t running? Nike+ recorded my start time as 10:33 a.m., and as best I can figure, my end time for 22 miles was 2:58 p.m., for 4:23ish total.
• I’m OK with that, but it took a while to be OK with that. I have said, and meant, that I’m not running Berlin with a specific time goal, but I also know what I should be able to do based on training, and I’ve been thinking of 5 hours as my not-quite-worst-case-scenario time (a normal bad run, vs. injury/puking/getting locked in a portapotty). 4:23/22 miles could squeak me in under 5 hours, but it would be tough. That said: I would have taken some of those breaks in a marathon, but not all. I would have stopped less and walked more, and walking = forward progress. Plus, I know I wasn’t running at 100%. So yeah, I was briefly disappointed, but Rational Brain showed up and told me there was no reason to be, so I’m not.
• A day removed, I feel pretty good, though there could still be some major DOMS lurking. Niggles are my right Achilles and left IT band, neither bad. Stairs are fine. The worst pain is from blisters — both little toes and the spot on my right Achilles between the top of my sock and bottom of my calf sleeve.
• Let’s talk about Hoo Ha Ride Glide. It is not just for the ride, nor is it just for the hoo ha. A generous coating of BodyGlide + Ride Glide under the sports bra resulted in the least chafing, and least-painful post-run shower, in weeks.
• Less so: Banana Boat Natural Reflect sunscreen. It’s a lot to ask any sunscreen to completely protect me for 4.5 hours, but I still expected better, especially because I hoped this would be my magic bullet physical sunscreen. My go-to (chemical, creepy) sunscreen is discontinued and I have about 2 total ounces left in my hoarded stockpile, so I’m scrambling.
• Nutrition/hydration: pumpkin bread and 20 oz. of water with Nuun pre-run; 40-ish oz. of Nuun water + another 20-30ish oz. of regular water throughout the run; Gu at 1:00, 3 Shot Bloks at too damn late (2:10-2:15ish); Gu at 2:50; 3 Shot Bloks at 3:25-3:30. My stomach was solid, so I’ll plan to eat this basic way on race day, though with better timing (1:00-1:45-2:30-3:15-4:00). I also may eat something (more pumpkin bread?) if I have a long wait before the start.
• One option I didn’t consider when figuring out where to move the 22 was running it the week before the marathon. Because: Who runs 22 miles the week before a marathon? But I’m wondering if I should have given it some thought, given how much better I’ve felt on long runs where I was building steadily from the week before (14, 18, 20) vs. runs where I was jumping up after a cutback (16, 22).
• What I’m saying is, I’m afraid of the taper. What will it feel like to run so much after not running much for so long?
• That said: TAPER! I’ve never doubted I’d finish this marathon if I could just make it to the start. I’m finally starting to believe I’ll get there.

20 Miles and a Rookie Mistake

It seems fitting that the day Theodora featured my rookie marathon story would be the day I would make my first major rookie mistake of this training cycle.

Actually, calling it a rookie mistake gives me an out. It implies that I didn’t know better. But I definitely knew better.

I ran when something hurt.

I woke up Saturday morning with this odd pain near my right Achilles. I’ve had problems with the left before, and feeling something there wouldn’t have fazed me, but the right? That was weird. Weirder was that it was showing up after a rest day. A delayed reaction from Thursday’s run on a new-to-me trail? Soreness from overeager Theraband exercises after a couple of beers? (<– Right? Seriously, this is where my brain was.) I had no idea, but not knowing didn't make it not real.

Still. Still. I've had Achilles issues before, and tossing on my calf sleeves and stretching a little more usually takes care of things. And I couldn't run 20 on Sunday because of prior commitments, and next week is a cutback because of a wedding weekend during which any miles will be welcome but not guaranteed, and at that moment — at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning when I really wanted to run and not screw up my other plans — I decided that if I was going to run at all, I might as well at least try to do the 20. At that particular moment, getting to the second weekend of September without having done it seemed worse. So I rolled on the sleeves, and I walked around the block, and I stretched, and I ran.

I ran 20 miles. And other than that, it was pretty awesome.

But I don't think I get to say "other than that," in this case, because of course it still hurts. There are some lessons that are, for some reason, extremely hard for me to learn.

Granted, I could have been dumber. I promised myself I'd stop if it ever felt worse than it did at the start — and it didn't. It did, actually, eventually feel better, though it took approximately 18 miles for that to happen. But this run? Still really dumb.

Maybe I got away with one. I can do single-leg calf raises and walk up hills and do all the other things I couldn't do when I had issues with my left Achilles a couple of years ago — and no, they're not the most fun things in the world to do right now, but I can do them. Walking around on Sunday felt so normal that if I'd been planning my run for that day instead, I'd never have had an inkling that anything was wrong, and I could have quite possibly ended up in exactly the same position I'm in now. (The position I'm in now being "On the couch with my foot in a bucket of ice water.") The area around my ankle bone is pretty swollen and nasty, and the idea of running on it now seems nothing short of ridiculous. But I did the "cutback week" calculus when I decided to run, and I have some time to let it rest. Not all the time in the world, obviously, but some time.

But ugh. If I did get away with one, I know it's just and only that — tempting fate and winning. Which doesn't mean fate should be tempted in the first place. If this passes quickly, I'll be glad I ran the 20 — glad because of the confidence boost it gave me, because of how strong I felt in every other respect. If it doesn't, I'll always know that I knew better. And there’s nothing more profound I can say than: That would really, really suck.

(And I’m also a little annoyed that I can’t celebrate my new longest run ever the way I want to — because seriously. It was so good. Other than that.)

Minutae:

• San Francisco gave me the most ideal running weather for my first 20-miler: high 50s/low 60s and overcast the whole time. I bought a bigger handheld water bottle after my water-rationing issues on my 16- and 18-milers, but it really wasn’t necessary on such a cool day.
• Pre-run hydration/nutrition: 20 oz. of water with Nuun, pumpkin bread. During-run hydration/nutrition: 20-oz bottle of water with a Nuun tab, topped off a few times but I’d be surprised if I drank more than 30-35 ounces total; Island Nectars Rocktane at 1:00; 3 black cherry Shot Bloks at 1:45; peanut butter Gu around 2:45. This run’s experiment was taking caffeine earlier in the run, in both the Island Nectars and the Shot Bloks. I’m not sure if there was a benefit, but I never had an energy crash and my stomach handled it fine, which was all I really needed to know.
• My route went through the park and along the ocean, then around Lake Merced and back. Having now done all three, I can assert that running around Lake Merced > biking around Lake Merced > walking around Lake Merced. Running it is far less boring than walking it, and there’s no need to yell “on your left” every sixteen seconds.
• So here’s what I would most love to celebrate but can’t, really, yet: my stats. 20.1 miles, 3:25, 10:13 average pace. That’s faster than I’ve been aiming for on these longest long runs, but I defend it in this case because my last two miles were the fastest, and I felt like I could have kept going. I don’t think it was a negative split — the whole downhill-out, uphill-back thing kind of kills that — but this was, by far, my strongest finish of any long-long run yet.
• Dammit.

And Two More Makes 18

I’m big on firsts, on the novelty of newness. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t the part of marathon training I was looking forward to most: when every long run takes me to a distance record, to mileage milestones, to revelations about what I can do with a little time and effort. So on Saturday I woke up and thought: Today, I will run 18 miles, and it will be the only first 18-miler I ever get, so I might as well try to love it.

In our continued efforts to not get totally sick of Golden Gate Park, Pete and I drove south of the city to the 6-mile Sawyer Camp Trail. The map showed a .6-mile connector from Sawyer Camp to a northern trail, which would give us just over 17 miles; I had 18 planned and Pete anywhere from 12-20, so we figured we’d run the two trails and double back where necessary.

I last ran Sawyer Camp for my first 14-miler, and I still remember the rude surprise of the hill that starts around mile 4.5, briefly levels out, and then continues up all the way to the turnaround. At the time, it messed with my mental game to see my pace drop so precipitously; this time, I was happy for the excuse to take it easier. How marathon training changes things!

The one downside of Sawyer Camp as a long-run destination is that there’s only one fountain, just before the 6-mile mark. That fountain became a focal point, splitting the run roughly into thirds: 6 miles to the top of Sawyer Camp; drink; a 5.2-mile out-and-back on the connector and the Andreas Trail; drink; 6.8 miles back to the car. I figured each part would take me a bit more than an hour if I kept my pacing right, and I worked on really getting that into my head: You’re going to be running for three hours, so chill out and slow down, won’t you?

The first hour flew by in a haze of good podcasts and solid people-watching (and deer-spotting!). I refilled my bottle at the fountain and started phase two, along the dirt and gravel trail and down to the Andreas segment. The trail portion was short, and though the downhills made me nervous — I’d be just the person to twist an ankle at a time like this — the flats and uphills were energizing. I’ve been thinking about running more trails after Berlin, and the joy I got from this taste suggests I’m onto something there.

I’d almost caught up to Pete at the turn, and we high-fived as he doubled back on his way to 20 miles. After the turn I hit a little uphill, which was weird because I didn’t remember feeling a downhill, but when the path flattened out, I got a spectacular view of the water and the hills, and right then “The Bleeding Heart Show” by the New Pornographers came on my Shuffle, and I swear — it was one of those capital-M Moments, where everything is beautiful and I remember why I wanted to run a marathon, because I could just run forever, singing all the way home. I might have gotten a little weepy. It’s the endorphins, right?

Passing the fountain again marked phase three, and the hardest terrain was behind me; now it was all about seeing that 18. I stayed conservative on the long downhill and made it until about 2:30 before my legs started feeling like lead. But even in that, there was a victory: I’d had to muscle through 8 of last week’s 16 miles, so I knew I could tough out four this time.

At 2:50 on my watch, this officially became my longest run. I was just about out of water; my last segment was the longest and also the hottest, so drinking every 15 minutes as I’d done at the start wasn’t really working. I intended to find a shaded stretch to double back on for the extra .8, but my long-run-addled brain kept rejecting sections of trail as “too hilly” or “not shady enough” — and before I knew it I was at the end of the trail, looping back on one of the most exposed stretches. Well done with that logic. I had extra water stashed in the car and almost ran there to refill, but then I thought, “Oh, come on, it’s like eight more minutes” and just got it done.

I watched as my GPS hit 18 miles and kept running straight to the car, where I fished out my spare bottle of water, dumped half of it over my head, refilled that half with Gatorade, and walked back onto the trail for an attempted cool-down. I felt like every muscle in my legs had simultaneously tensed up. I made a half-hearted effort at stretching, watched Pete run in, and tried to figure out a way to get into the car without bending at any joints. I bet that was fun to watch.

Self-portrait with shadow and sweat

Despite that questionable aftermath, I felt fine by the time we got back to the city — and especially fine after a Pastrami-Charmed Life sandwich from Ike’s, a handful of cajun potato chips, several more bottles of water, some quality time with the foam roller, and a highly satisfying ice bath. A marathon still seems a little absurd, but maybe there is something to this whole just-two-more-miles deal. This time, I needed fewer head games to get through; I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. And I can’t wait to see a 20 on my watch just a few days from now.

Minutae:

• Pre-run food/drink: pumpkin bread, 20 ounces of water with a Nuun tab. During-run food/drink: 30 ounces of water (first 10 ounces with half a Nuun tab); chocolate mint Gu at 1:00; three margarita Shot Bloks at 1:45ish, Island Nectars Gu Rocktane at 2:30ish.
• The Island Nectars was my attempt at taking a caffeinated gel that isn’t a fake coffee flavor and also wouldn’t taste like boogers (I’m talking to you, Pineapple Rocktane). It surely wasn’t good, but it didn’t remind me of snot, either, so: moderate success. But I don’t know that the caffeine did a whole lot for me. I wonder if I should have taken it earlier?
• More on fueling: I’ve never eaten three separate times on a run before — I’ve never run long enough for that to feel necessary — and I felt like I was eating constantly. But I also never got hungry or felt a substantial drop in energy, and my stomach stayed calm the whole time. I’ll likely try to stick to this schedule on future long runs but perhaps take my first gel even sooner, around 45 minutes in.
• The chafing. You guys. I made peace — or at least declared a detente — with my body quite some time ago, but if I could perhaps not have boobs for the next six weeks, I’d be a happier human. (And yes, I used Body Glide.)
• Weird aches after the run: both pinkie toes; my right shoulder. I do carry my water bottle in my right hand, but I’ve used it for almost a year and never had this problem. Maybe it just took longer to get blood flowing back up there?
• Final stats: 18.04 miles, 3:08:32 (10:27/mile average). Fastest mile (10) at 9:45; slowest mile (6) at 11:01.

16 Miles: In Which Things Get Real

This is the story I remember from when Pete was training for his first marathon: He went out to run 16 miles for the first time, just a little longer than he’d run before. He ended up sitting down on the side of a Golden Gate Park path he’d run a zillion times, three miles from home that might as well have been thirteen.

He made it home fine and went on to run an awesome 18-miler the next week, and later an awesome marathon — so that terrible run was hardly a sign of disaster. But it made me forever think of 16 miles as the distance when marathon training gets really, really real.

After three runs in a row that followed roughly the same route in Golden Gate Park, I needed a change of scenery for this run. A Dailymile friend had suggested the Lafayette-Moraga Trail in the East Bay, and some research and intel from Aron confirmed that it would be ideal. The plan was to run a warm-up mile near the trailhead, then run the whole 7.5ish-mile out-and-back to get to 16.

Jumping to the end of the story: I ran 16 miles, and I did not collapse by the side of the road. My IT band behaved perfectly well — I’d brought a book and my own set of car keys in case I needed to turn back early, and I was committed to walking back at the first sign of pain, all of which turned out to be unnecessary — and the only new damage appears to be one teeny blister. I managed to get lost three different times, and this is why you should never let me plan your running routes, but miles are miles whether they’re on a trail or on a sidewalk directly opposite (but somehow out of view of) the trail, and at the end of the day, my watch still read 16.

I also have absolutely no idea how anyone runs a marathon.

For the first time, I hit my goal long run pace, averaging just over 10:30 miles (10:31 or 10:33, depending on how many decimal places you count). This did not feel “stupid easy,” though, the way some much faster paces did a few weeks ago. This did not feel remotely in the same zip code as easy, but I didn’t understand how to make it easier without just walking. I tacked on an extra tenth at the end, to guard against my GPS reading short (since I got lost, I also lost the feedback of the trail markers) and to make sure Nike+ would actually count it as 16 miles, and even running an extra .1 was hard — much less imagining running another TEN-POINT-ONE.

Looking at the Nike+ data gives me some clues as to why this felt tough: The first five miles of the path go slowly uphill, and while it’s nothing too dramatic (400ish feet?), that’s a long stretch of mostly false flat. (Weirdly, the mile I felt the worst was downhill.) I clearly could have paced this more evenly: 10 of the 16 miles were between 10:05 and 10:25, but the ones that were over 10:30 were very, very over. A later-than-planned start also didn’t help; it wasn’t a particularly warm day by East Bay standards, but if it’s not 60 and foggy I don’t understand what’s going on, and bad run-math meant I was finishing the toughest part of my longest run ever at goddamned noon.

But hey: I ran 16 miles! I don’t know why 16 felt like such a leap, why it felt like so much more of a physical and mental struggle than 13 or 14 ever have, but it’s a leap I made. And when I told Pete later that I didn’t understand how anyone ran a marathon, he said: Just keep adding two miles. You’ll add two more, and two more, and two more. Eventually, you’ll get there.

Two more miles? Katie-Bell-style now: I own this shit.

I even got this sweet Nike+ badge thingie:

Which, OK, actually made me pretty proud. Especially because the last Nike+ badge I got was, no lie, this (after Saturday’s bike ride):

Nitty-gritty:

• Pre-run food/beverage: pumpkin bread, 16 oz of water with a Nuun tab. During-run food/beverage: 30-ish ounces of water (started with 10 oz and half a Nuun tab and refilled the bottle at least twice from fountains along the route); one chocolate Honey Stinger gel at the hour mark; two margarita Shot Bloks at the two-hour mark; one last margarita Shot Blok around 2:15-2:20. Stomach was fine, suggesting that I really am better at fueling for long runs than for a stupid five-miler.
• I’ve done the same basic long run nutrition since I started needing nutrition for long runs, but the specific flavors and brands were both new this time. The margarita Bloks aren’t my favorite jelly thing — and I like almost all jelly things — but my body craves salt in the heat, and I think they’ll be a good choice for any hot run. The Honey Stinger gel tasted fine, like slightly chocolatey honey (um, surprise), but it was too runny to take easily, and I doubt I’ll buy another.
• The last water fountain was out of order, and Pete and I both were hurting for water when we got back to the car. I opened the trunk to get my phone and map the nearest gas stations, and there I discovered most of a jug of distilled water left over from Wildflower camping. I have rarely felt more gleeful in my life.
• I’m not sure if it was hunger, dehydration, the change in motion, or a combination of the three, but I started feeling nauseated on the drive back to the city. I was also craving a Slurpee, per usual, so we stopped at a Berkeley 7-11, and sure enough, the stupid Slurpee settled my stomach. If I keep running in the East Bay, I will probably develop a pretty solid mental map of all the 7-11s.
• I understand the logic of the cutback week, but it also made me feel like I’d forgotten how to run for more than 90 minutes. I’m excited to be building again.



• When the Of Monsters and Men song on this playlist came on, I started singing. Loudly. Like nobody could hear how out of key I was. Which greatly amused the cycling couple who were coming up the hill as I started barreling down.