Yosemite Half Marathon // It's all downhill from here!

"Maybe the more experienced you are and the more you learn about yourself, the more you allow yourself to ascend to your maximum potential."

I don't know why or how it happened, but I ended up signing up for the Yosemite Half Marathon with a bunch of friends... with complete knowledge that I would have run Big Sur just 13 days prior. I joked that this was my introduction to Boston 2 Big Sur, since I've determined I will run it someday. For overall recovery, however, it might not have been the best idea...

Chip time: 1:41:39 (7:46/mi)

10th F 25-29 / 398

52nd F / 1640

178th OA / 2537

Course logged short by 0.11 so I jogged 0.1 to get the HM on my Garmin :P

The Course

Yosemite Half is what I'd call an extreme downhill course hosted by Vacation Races. Their series hosts a half marathon every month near 12 different national parks in the U.S. May is reserved for Yosemite National Park -- where the race starts south of the park, runs southward, and finishes at Bass Lake. The elevation gain/loss was 344 ft / 2,360 ft (net loss ~2,000 ft). Overall, the course was fun and beautiful and aid stations were plentiful.. however, pacers and organization could have been better.

The 2017 course can be divided up into 3 parts:
a) The first four miles of pleasant, undulating trail running which gave your joints and quads a little warmup before
b) ... tearing it up for six miles on a paved downhill road called "Beasore Road" which lived up to its name. This descent was a -6% overall with some parts getting up to -10%. As you can imagine, this part has you FLYING. Remember to keep that cadence up and your steps as light as possible!
c) Finally, you run the last 5K trying to regain some sense of pace on an undulating paved road around the lake to the finish.

Aid Stations:

The starting line had a raffle in the early morning (not sure how the runners brought their prizes down the mountain...???), instant coffee, hot chocolate (say whaat!), hot water, bananas, and porta potties galore (no need to wait in line - just walk past all of the lines to the very, very end and you get the porta potty of your choosing).
Aid station support during the 13.1 was very frequent (every 2 miles) and were well-stocked with water and gels.

A Fast but Short Course:

While this was a fast course, conducive to PRs, I also feel the course was short. The mile markers were early compared to the mile splits I was clocking on my GPS watch. It's not a USATF course, so I'm not super keen on calling this a PR, but it was nice to get a fast official chip time!

Pacers:

Race organizers hired a pace team to run times starting at 1:40 to 10 minute increments. My soft time goal was 1:45 so I just placed myself in between 1:40-1:50. But for some reason, I was following 1:50 for nearly three quarters of the race. Hue... talk about going out too fast. Wasn't too thrilled because I know how annoying that must've been for anyone hoping to run 1:50... I'm left to wonder how much faster the 1:40 group must have been running since my official time was 1:41:39... I had the sense that the pacers were not super experienced (unlike the AWESOME Clif pace team at Big Sur).

Shuttles:

There were two heats for this race in order to divert too much traffic leaving out of Oakhurst. Heat 1 started at 6:00am and Heat 2 started at 7:30am. While the faster predicted times were recommended to run in Heat 1, it seemed that people could just go into whatever heat they liked since they did not police it this year.

My boyfriend, and two friends, jumped in Heat 1... we had a positive experience on the shuttles because we arrived on a side of the school that did not have a lot of incoming traffic and we hopped on the bus early due to a miscommunication. Just be smart about it for future races, arrive early, wear warm clothes. They let you drop off your bags at the start line.

At mile 3, you could drop your jacket off and those clothes would be shuttled down to the finish line... however, I lost my nice long sleeved shirt at the dropoff because they weren't able to deliver the clothes drop bags before I left. That really annoyed me. And I tried to reach out to the race organizers by e-mail and haven't gotten a response yet! (It's been TWO DAYS!)

The Race

I started this race very conservatively at 8:30ish pace and found myself breathing harder than usual at that heart rate, perhaps due to the elevation (5,000ft at the start). Once the pounding downhill started, I stayed conservative until a porta potty break at the halfway mark. After which, I quickened the pace so I could catch up to a woman I was keeping my eye on throughout the race. It felt good so I kept on going. I told myself that I would be able to get a sub-8:00 average pace as long as I was able to clock 8:00 miles in the last few miles of flat and undulating road. Once we hit mile 10, we encountered our first uphill in 6 miles and my legs were thankful. It was hard, but my legs were happy for the break.

One thing that surprised me in the last 5K is how "easily" I was able to push pace. I didn't look at my watch very much, I just tried to push as best as I could, knowing I had only 3.1 miles left. The experience took me back to when I ran the Berkeley Half, where I started out too fast, crashed, and gave up mentally by the last 4 miles. My mind wandered to a difficult 17-mile progressive training run 7 weeks prior, where the last 5K was at a tempo pace (but hard effort by that point). And finally, I recalled Big Sur where I surprised myself with a 9K push of pace that led to a -3:00 negative split finish. Somehow those three experiences gave me the confidence to push with whatever pace my legs were giving me. When I would review my race on Garmin Connect and Strava later, I surprised myself with sub-8:00 paces (7:43, 7:50, 7:45) in 10-13.

These experiences really speak to how important it is for runners to learn from your racing and training and apply any lessons learned in your future races. I read too many race reports of runners who start off too fast every single race, lament it in their race reports, but rarely alter their race strategies thereafter.

I remember watching "4 Minute Mile" on Netflix (a low-budget 2014 film about a high school runner and his track coach) where the coach says:

You got somethin' in here. It's so deep in there, and you gotta beat it. You gotta face that fear. You GOT to, because if you don't, you're gonna be me, and, buddy, you don't want that. But if you do - and I don't care if you never run another race in your life - because if you DO face that fear, it'll change your life. I promise you. It's the hardest thing you'll ever have to do, but you gotta do it. [...] And then you'll be able to push right through the pain. You'll go right through the door. And when you're about ready to pass out and your legs can't move and your lungs can't breathe and your eyes can't see, you'll know that it's just the beginning, and it's so beautiful. It's beautiful. That's all I've been tryin' to teach you.

"Beating" that fear or that wall (or whatever it was) was a key motif in the film, one I was skeptical about. In the film, the runner, with all the weight of the world on his shoulders, stressed, and nearly broken from the tragedies and the circumstances around him, runs until he collapses... past the point of mental barrier and past physical fortitude. I wondered if such a thing actually existed and if such a thing could be applied to all runners. But after running Big Sur, I believe that with the right training, you can break through that voice in your head that screams "STOP. STOP. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS. OR YOU KNOW WHAT - JUST. SLOW. DOWN. NO MORE SUFFERING. PLEASE."

I don't know if I've ever truly "face[d] that fear" but maybe there are different levels of it... y'know?

Maybe the more experienced you are and the more you learn about yourself, the more you allow yourself to ascend to your maximum potential.

His Race

Marvin's race also went very well given his training! His IT band problems were pretty much on the verge of returning - and he had gotten sick about two weeks out - so he took the race very conservatively and foam-rolled routinely pre- and post-race. His longest run never broke double digits so I'm super happy he was able to finish! After achieving a very respectable 2:08:56, he, like all of us, suffered from sore muscles and a temporary waddly gait. So proud and happy for him!

Post-Race

I AM SO SORE. Also, my knee hurts. :( (That is all.)

What's Next?

May - June 2017 | Cycling (w/ mostly easy and trail running)

July 8, 2017 | Golden Gate Coastal Trail 30K (18-mile)

July - August 2017 | Cycling and Running

September 25, 2017 | Santa Cruz Triathlon (olympic)

October - December 2017 | Running (base building)

Big Sur International Marathon // FIRST MARATHON COMPLETE!

People always say finishing a marathon is a big accomplishment. I am so so happy that my first marathon was Big Sur and that I finished strong, under four hours.

I don't feel that I can do a proper race report so I'm just going to spill out a summary of all my thoughts here.

Official chip time - 3:56:57
Pace - 9:02/mi
Elevation gain - 1,461ft (Garmin's GPS tracking is getting better year to year!)



The Race Strategies and Execution:

• Strategy #1: Run withe Pacer. The week before, I was dead set on running with a pacer, just because I was dealing with all sorts of misfortune in the three weeks leading up to the race (bruised ribs, getting sick with a nasty cough, pain and difficulty breathing from said cough+bruised rib combo, and a skin infection). Also, I wanted a group of people to enjoy the race with (and draft off of in the headwinds :P). I flip flopped between a decision to run with the 3:45 pacer or the 4:00 pacer, since that's all that was available (I wish they had had 3:55!!!!). In the end, since I had dealt with so much and didn't taper as well as I'd hoped, I chose to run with the 4:00 Clif Bar Pace Team Pacer (George). Per George's suggestion, I planned to keep with him until around mile 22 then push until the end if I was feeling good.
• I ended up learning quite a lot from the pacer. It turns out his favorite way to race marathons is via heart rate, which I personally think might be the way I race future marathons as well. He was also very good about making sure we took the early downhills in a very relaxed manner. He reminded us to keep our shoulders rolled back and relaxed with chin up, and had us mind our form several times throughout the race. This was very new to me but I found this was the perfect way to keep me focused on my goals. I will be implementing this technique in future races!
• I ended up gradually building up speed starting at mile 21. The last 5 miles was completely uncharted territory for me, with my biggest distance being a 21-mile trail race 6 1weeks out. But given I felt fine after Folsom, and that during the Big Sur marathon, I ran at only a slightly higher intensity in the precursor 21-miles, I felt like I was at liberty to push the pace. 
• It's said that the last 10K of the marathon is where the marathon truly starts. And where your several weeks of training shine through.  When I first started to pick up speed away from the pace group, I began by thinking about how much I didn't want them to catch me. I could still hear George's voice behind me for about a half a mile or so. It was an interesting feeling - being chased - but it helped me pick up my paces! Then, when I couldn't hear George anymore, I started focusing inward again and remembered that I had to eat. I was worried because I had run out of Gu at this point. Fortunately, the aid stations were plentiful with food options. I was able to scarf down a banana and forge ahead. 
• With four miles left to go, I kept telling myself that I'd done four miles easy-peasy SO MANY TIMES on friggin' tired legs, in the middle of 50-mile training weeks. This was nothing short of a tempo run in the middle of that. I kept telling myself that there was no such thing as the wall. "WALL? WHAT WALL? THERE IS NO WALL." NOT WITH THE TRAINING YOU DID. And certainly not with the conservative start you had.
• At two miles, I was still not sure whether or not I could keep this effort. I told myself: I'd done 2 mile runs at a bare minimum every day for 128 days straight. I CAN DO TWO MILES. It wasn't just the thought of that which carried me: it was the fact that I actually did the training. The fact that I consistently ran on tired legs no matter what. My training gave me the mental confidence I needed to carry me through.
• Strategy #2. Stay Inspired & Run With Your Heart. Think of my friends and the people who inspire me during the last few miles of the race.
• At the last hill at mile 25, I heard the voices tempting me to walk like a few other people I saw going up the hill. "If I walk, I can finish strong at the end." It was during those few hundred meters that I thought of my friends and my family and my boyfriend who were waiting for me at the finish line. I wanted to make them proud. Proud of who I am. And happy that they inspired me to get to the finish line strong. So I didn't walk. I pushed through and passed several other runners (of various race distances). I knew the rest was downhill or flat so I ran strong at the end! 

Goals:

• Smile and have fun! [check!]
• B Goal: Under 4 hr [check!]
• A Goal: Under 9:00/mi pace [so close, maybe could have left the pacer earlier but was unsure of myself]

Nutrition:

• Pre-Race @ BSIM starting line
• Coffee (~45min before)
• 1/2 banana (provided)
• 3/4 cup Toasted Shredded Wheats (TJs)
• Gu Energy Gel: Vanilla Bean (~5min before)
• During Race
• 4 x Gu Energy Gels --> 1@45min, 1@right before Hurricane Point, then as needed, approx 45min between
• 1/2 banana (aid station)
• 3 x 1/2 strawberries (aid station)

Aid Stations:

• 1 porta potty break: dashed to a porta potty that someone was just exiting so avoided a wait time! (score one for Andrea!)
• several water refills at BYOB stations (5?) due to it being a hot day

Finish:

The best part of finishing was hearing my boyfriend and parents call my name as I ran through the chute towards the finish. I even heard the MC say my name! (Ok, I let ONE girl pass me - I probably wasn't sprinting the hardest I could have. I don't know what race she was running but maybe if I had known she was sneaking up on me, I would have sprinted harder huehue - next time I'll look behind me before I make the final sprint :P)

When I got to the end, I didn't care what my time was. I knew I didn't reach my A goal but I was still THRILLED to reach my B goal, which I knew I crushed by several minutes. (Side note: I learned that I should set tiered goals from the Berkeley Half last November). 

Then, after chatting with my family and appeasing their need to take photos, Marvin looked up my finish time and read out 3:56:57. Woah! I broke 3:57! Imagine if I had walked any part of that last hill.... dang. That was certainly the icing on the cake for me.

It's true that I might have been able to break off from the pacer earlier for an A goal finish. But given the circumstances, I got so much more enjoyment/fun out of the experience than if I had tried to run a minute+ faster. The A goal pace was only 2-3 seconds per mile faster but I imagine that running with the pace group for most of the way made it much more fun than if I had ran alone. In addition, I took away a great lesson in focus and control from the Clif team pacer which I will apply in future races.

Post-race pains:

Any race is going to do a number on you. But add hills and road camber? The hills definitely beat my body up significantly. Road camber from the Big Sur was not as bad as I thought it would be. However, I think over time it was significant enough for my knees and feet to feel it afterwards. Same-day pain shifted between achey shins, painful extensor tendons on my feet, tweaked knees, hip soreness, and general soreness/tightness of my leg muscles (quads, glutes). I felt like a penguin afterwards!!

All in all, an amazing first marathon! I'm not sure I'll ever do a challenging course like this with a specific performance goal in mind again. My plan is to return to Big Sur one day as a Boston 2 Big Sur finisher, though. :)

At the very least, Big Sur will not be my last marathon. I've got a few more bucketlist marathons to check off first:

• Big Sur International Marathon [check!]
• Boston Marathon
• Great Wall Marathon