SF Marathon Course Change

We’re now just 10 days out from the San Francisco Marathon! If you’re running the full, heads up that the course has become quite a bit more challenging this year. Because of security concerns, runners must use the sidewalks on the bridge. We’ll be taking the northbound sidewalk to get to Marin, then the southbound sidewalk on the way back. I checked with race officials, and fortunately we won’t be taking the slippery stairs under the bridge. Instead, we’ll run down the fire road under, and back up to the bridge. We’ll climb200 feet in about half a mile. I’ve done this before in the Across the Bay 12k, and my pace dropped to 9:30 in the steepest section!

As Randy Pausch said, We can’t change the cards we’re dealt, just how we play the game. I’m adding a minute to my goal time, and will mentally prepare myself for a grueling uphill early in the marathon. And actually, the competitive side of me is sort of excited about this. I run a lot of hills as part of my weekly mileage, and have become good at hill climbing. This race is about my personal goals, not comparing myself to others, but it still would feel great to pass someone on that uphill.

Now that we’re 10 days away from race day, I’m entering taper mode. In preparing for this marathon, I was planning on running 14, 16, and 18 miles at race pace. Because of a backpacking trip, and the post-backpacking soreness, I wasn’t able to run the 18 miler on the scheduled date. After I recovered, it was too close to race day to take on such a taxing run — after the 16 miler I was exhausted for 4 days, and spent even longer recovering. I’d rather be undertrained than overtrained.