The past 18 months - a roundup

So, clearly I haven't been around in a while updating the blog.  I'm going to refer to the last 18 months as kind of a dark ages in terms of my running.  Last January I was seized by the crazy idea to get  my certification to teach Classical Pilates, so I spent about 9 months torturing myself and others and doing that.  And it was awesome, don't get me wrong, I learned a ton and I'm loving teaching now, but the running suffered, no question about it.

Yay Pilates!  Long stretch on the reformer - I could do this all day.

I had a really hard time balancing my time.  I'd get home late and wouldn't want to get up early to run, and everything just kind of fell to pieces in terms of running.  The pace got slower and slower, the miles less and less, and yeah, it kind of sucked.  In the middle of this, I had the bright idea to sign up with a group for the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco in October of last year.  I *never* thought we'd get in, or I probably wouldn't have bothered to sign up.  But sure, what the hell, I thought.  It's a lottery, it'll never happen.  And then it did.  So crap.  Then I had to actually train for it.  And I'd been ambitious enough to sign up for the full marathon, rather than just the half.

As part of the training, I ran the Pittsburgh Half Marathon, and clocked my slowest marathon time ever, 2:27 and change.  It was actually unexpectedly hot and the husband also didn't meet his time goal for the full marathon, but still.  Yuck.  Nothing fun about it.

Ok, I lied, it was kind of fun.  And the medal was great, as usual.

So, with that, I had a feeling Nike was going to be pretty slow.  I did ok in the Great Race 10k and set a second best, but the weather had been perfect and it had been kind of unexpected.  We went to San Francisco for a family trip and I resigned myself to running Nike.

 

Both feet off the ground and a smile on my face.
That's because it was almost over.

Here's the thing about the Nike Women's Marathon - it's not *really* designed to be a full marathon.  It's a half, with a full as an afterthought.  Most people do the half, and by most I mean 20 thousand of the 25 thousand who run it.  The first half of the course was a lot of fun.  I ran it with a charming woman named Mandy, who I knew from online, and she really helped pull my slow ass up the hills (and there were some HILLS in that race).  We ran through the Presidio, through Golden Gate Park, around Lake Merced.  It was pretty damn cool.  But she was really not feeling great, and I was pretty tired, too, so we came in well over 5 hours.  When we finished, there was basically no food left at the finish line.  I got half a bagel and half a banana after 26.2 miles.  No coconut water, no chocolate, no other fun stuff (which had all been promised and was supposed to be a major perk of doing the race).  The chute wasn't secure at  all and I saw a lot of non-runners grabbing freebies and such.  Not cool.  This won't be a race I'd be doing again.  I'd run the San Francisco Marathon for sure.  I LOVE San Francisco and would use any excuse to go out there (I'm trying to talk the husband into doing Big Sur in a couple of years), but not this race, it totally wasn't worth the price tag or the pain in the ass factor.  Still, the medal was nice.

Bloody Mary and my Little Blue Box.

Next up: Gen conquers the half marathon.