Running the Nike women’s Half Marathon

Today, I ran the Nike Women’s Half Marathon. Originally I had signed up for the full marathon (it seemed like a good idea in April…) but in contrast to last year when I was running 26.2 miles and trained together with the Nike running club for months, I hardly trained long runs this year. I did a lot of bootcamp, but I didn’t run more than 7 miles since the SF half marathon in July. So I didn’t expect to break my personal record on 13.1 miles but nonetheless I wanted to run the race. It was so much fun, the race has a fantastic atmosphere. It was chilly this morning at 7 am and 2h in the race, it started raining. But by then, I was sweating a lot and I didn’t mind the rain at all. As I officially signed up for the full marathon but dropped out after 13.1 miles, I probably won’t get an official race time (because I got disqualified) but according to my stopwatch I ran it in 2:18:43h – that is 2:30 min slower than my last race. It’s a 10:35 min/mile pace (which translates in 6.5 min/km or 9.2 km/h), it’s not great but considering the huge amounts of hills it could be worse. Running past the Cliff House approaching the Great Highway around mile 8 I felt really great and I even considered running the full race for a minute, but that would have been quite stupid (in respect to injury). And with the next incline in Golden Gate Park, I quickly dropped that idea… (why does it seem to me that even if you run a loop in this park, it is always uphill…?). I want to do more speed training to eventually get closer to a 2h-half marathon time, but it won’t be easy to take 15 minutes off.

Overall, I had a fantastic day and I enjoyed every minute of the race and that’s what it is all about, right? The finisher Tiffany’s necklace looks nicer than last year’s on the first glance but if you look closer, it is really poorly processed. Oh well, at least I got one – I heard that some finishers got a 2006, 2007 or 2008 finisher necklace because they ran out of the 2010 necklace…and the design of the finisher shirt is really nice this year, too. I love racing, I still feel the rush and I want to run another race in a better time (may be a race that is less hilly…). Woot woot, I feel great!!!