positive identification

I ran the Bay to Breakers again this year with some friends. I was definitely not in good running condition, having had knee problems and a lingering cough over the past few weeks, but managed to finish anyway.

Afterwards we walked back to a friend's house, where we'd stashed a change of clothes and some groceries. We took turns showering and cooking, and eventually we ended up watching the party (she lives on Fell Street, which is pretty much party central) while munching on French toast and breakfast sandwiches.

I told everyone to keep an eye out for my coworkers, who were dressed as lemmings in green wigs and blue snuggies. We finally spotted them shortly after noon, at which point we had an exchange that went something like this:

friend:	Wow, the guys in the back are holding someone up. She looks really drunk! Do you know her? It's a dark-haired girl.
me:	(glancing out the window) Hmm. No, I don't think so, I only know like 4 out of the 13 lemmings, and they're all white guys.

Then, this morning at work:

me:	Hey, I saw you guys on the course yesterday. Who was the drunk girl?
coworker #1:	Umm. No comment.

A couple hours later:

me:	How was your weekend?
coworker #2:	Oh, good. Met up with J and some of the lemmings after the race.
me:	Hmm. (J is an Asian female, a coworker from another office.) Hey <coworker #1>, was J the drunk girl?
coworker #1:	I said no comment!

Hehe.

enjoying life

On the whole, I quite enjoy my job. Every day, I get to work on interesting products with smart and fun people. When I stay home sick for a couple of days, I feel like I'm missing out; I like knowing what's going on in the tech world (inside and outside the company), I like being involved in developing new features, and I like the social aspect of hanging out with my coworkers at work. I would certainly be bored to death if I had no job and stayed at home every day.

However, I was thinking last weekend (on a plane coming back from Chicago) that if I somehow acquired enough money that I could just fly around and do fun things for the rest of my life, I'd probably be fine with that too. In fact, I think one of the reasons that I like my job is that it pays me enough and is flexible enough that I can do things like fly to Chicago for the weekend. Yup, it was only three days, but I got to spend quality time with my brother and his girlfriend, experienced five hours of delicious interactive dining theatre, had a nice long run along the Chicago lakefront, waited in an hour-long line for gourmet hot dogs with lots of other friendly food-lovers, and fell asleep in the living room while lying on the floor watching movies.

On the agenda for next week: visiting friends in Los Angeles, visiting family in Houston, and a cousin reunion at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando. My youngest cousin is finally old enough to do fun trips (she's going to college this year), so I hope this is the first of many exciting cousin adventures.

incremental improvement

Just finished today's Goblin Run in 26:58. I didn't dress in costume (yes, bad me), but if the listed course distance of 3.18 miles is correct, I did achieve a new personal best of 8:29/mile. (My previous best was in the spring, when I ran 8:32/mile. Huge improvement, right?) I'm a little bummed that I got passed at the last second by a guy in a Luigi suit, though.

b2b++

Last Sunday, D and I ran our second Bay to Breakers. (Actually, I ran my second, he ran his third.)

Last year we stayed Saturday night with a friend who lives less than a mile from the starting line. This year, our best overnight option was to stay about two miles from the start. I asked D if he was okay walking/jogging two miles before the race; he thought that it would be a great warm-up, so the plan was set. We were out the door by 7am, with the only hitch being the 50-degree weather. I decided at the last minute to start the run wearing a fleece, because I was pretty sure I would freeze in my sleeveless dry-fit shirt otherwise.

We started the race with two friends, but D was in Corral A and the rest of us were in Corral B. Then, the three of us lost track of each other as we were weaving our way past the crowds of slow joggers and walkers during the first mile. I'm really not sure why there were so many people who were obviously NOT 10-minute milers in our corral. Next time, I'm going to sign up for Corral A; I'm definitely not capable of running 8-minute miles but apparently no one else observes the rules, so now I don't feel obliged to, either.

Anyway, by the end of the first mile, the crowds had thinned out a bit, and I was on a pretty good sub-10 pace. This was the first time I'd tried running an event while wearing my heart rate monitor, and I must say, I'm a big fan. First of all, it was useful to know at each mile marker how fast I was running. Secondly, it was really easy for me to determine if my pace was too fast or too slow; all I had to do was maintain a constant heart rate. I spent most of the race between 165 and 170 bpm, except at the Hayes Street Hill and in the last mile and a half, where I was consciously ignoring the monitor.

Just before I started up the hill, I took off my fleece and tied it around my waist; it was still cold but I figured I'd be warmer soon enough. I ran the rest of the race like that, but in the end I was glad I'd brought the fleece; it got really cold after the end as we were walking back.

Last year I got frustrated at the top of the hill because there's a part where it flattens out for a few meters and then starts going up for another block. Unfortunately, you don't know this until you get to the flat part, and then you realize you're not done yet. This year I knew what was coming, and paced myself properly so I didn't have to stop for water at the top. Nevertheless, I went into the third mile at around 18:40 but didn't hit the fourth mile marker until nearly 30:00.

It was pretty uneventful running the fourth and fifth miles through the park. I managed to make up a little ground time-wise, but it still took me until almost 49:00 to finish the fifth mile. Luckily the last few miles are mostly downhill, and I was able to gain some ground there. I'm really not sure about the right technique for running downhill, but I was basically running faster with longer strides in order to maintain my heart rate.

In the end, I managed to finish in 1:11:12, which was well under my goal of improving on my 1:15:38 last year. That's a 9:33/mile pace, which I think is the fastest I've run a "longer" (over 5k) race since I was twelve. D also achieved his goal, which was to run the race in under an hour. He finished at 59:43 (vs 1:02:53 last year), which is an 8:00/mile pace. We were both quite happy with our times.

This year, I'd also decided to wear my phone while running, so I could use My Tracks to track my run. I put it in a little zippered pocket on the back of my running shorts, which was annoying for the first few minutes, but after awhile I got used to it. I'm glad I did; the program collected a bunch of interesting stats, and generated graphs for both elevation and speed. Unfortunately the speed graph seems to only be available on the phone and not on the exported map.

I started the track during our warmup, so the stats cover more than the race itself, but apparently we went a total distance of 11.4 miles, and my average speed was 6.3 mph. I also extracted some data from the heart rate monitor; my average heart rate was 154 beats per minute (including the warm-up), and my max was 194.

After finishing and meeting up with D and the others, we went to pick up our T-shirts and then we started walking backwards along the course. We'd figured out last year that it was a good idea not to pick up the T-shirts until the day of the race, because then we could change out of our sweaty gross shirts and into the new shirts before walking back. Along the way we saw lots of interesting costumes, including a N'avi couple, as well as a couple of centipedes. Honestly, after awhile I was too tired and hungry to care much about watching the runners, so after about three miles of walking, we headed to Park Chow for brunch.

I think we beat most of the race crowd there; we only had to wait maybe ten minutes for our table for four. I think took a little longer to get our food, but maybe we were just so hungry that it felt like a long time. I ordered the Marion's Pancakes, D had the Chicken Sausage Scramble, and both of us had polished our plates in short order. From there we took the Muni (bus, then metro) back to the ballpark, and then walked another mile to get back to where we started.

Overall, we walked, jogged, and ran about 14 miles around San Francisco that day. Unfortunately, the Friday before the race, I'd switched to a standing desk at work. I'd been warned that it takes awhile to adjust, but after Friday I was feeling good about my ability to stand all day. Monday was a different story, but I made it through the day, and even went to my regular 6pm kickboxing class. That probably delayed my recovery; it wasn't until Tuesday evening that my legs (and shoulders, strangely enough) stopped being sore.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to next year; it'll be the 100th Bay to Breakers!

exceeds expectations

D and I are currently staying at the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok. We've stayed at some nice hotels during this trip, but this place takes the cake, service-wise.

I went to the hotel gym this afternoon to work out. As I entered the gym, I was slightly disappointed because I didn't see bottled water, only coolers and cups. I shouldn't have worried; the bottles were lined up on each of the cardio machines, and as I chose a treadmill, a gym staffer tore the plastic wrap off of my bottle and handed it back to me, along with a gym towel.

When I finished running, as I stepped off of the machine, a new staffer handed me a chilled lemongrass scented towel, and asked me if I would like to use the sauna. I told him that I was going to stretch, and inquired if there was a disinfectant bottle. He looked horrified, and assured me that he would take care of the machine. After laying out a gym mat for me, he cleaned and disinfected the treadmill, put new covers on the attached headphones, and replaced the bottle of water.

I noticed that he watched for a couple seconds as I started my stretches, and I wondered why. When the next person stepped off of his treadmill, he also said he wanted to stretch, and also got a mat prepped for him. He just sat on it for a little bit, so the staffer quickly asked him if he would like any assistance. Upon hearing assent, the staffer (who I guess is also a trainer?) launched into a full set of assisted leg stretches. It was like watching NBA warmups or something.

After I was done stretching, I was (of course) handed another chilled towel, and asked if I would like a sauna or a shower readied for me (I said I'd shower in my own bathroom). The mat was cleaned and put away before I finished wiping my face and drinking my water.

I love this place.

finished!

Several months ago, a friend convinced me to sign up for the 12k (7.46 mile) Bay to Breakers, even though I'd never run more than 5 miles before. Since then I've worked on longer distances, finally hitting the 7 mile mark last weekend.

On Saturday D and I stayed overnight at that friend's SoMa loft, as he lives walking distance from the starting line. We were up by 6am, met up with some other friends and got out the door around 7am, and were at the starting line dodging flying tortillas by 7:30am. This year there was a new "corral" system in place, and we were in Corral C (< 12-minute miles), the third of five corrals.

We spent some time zigzagging our way forward through the crowd in the beginning of the race, but were mostly clear of the slowest traffic by the time we hit the Hayes Street Hill. The hill was pretty tough, but on the bright side, we seemed to pass more people than passed us. There was a convenient water stop just over the top, where we grabbed a gulp or two of water before proceeding. At this point I'd lost everyone that I'd started with, except my running buddy who I'd been training with for the past couple of months; I guess we were more used to keeping track of each other.

During the fourth mile, we passed by another friend's house on the Panhandle, and were able to wave hello as she peeked through her second-story window in her pajamas. Soon afterwards, we entered Golden Gate Park. At first I thought it was a nice change, but by the fifth mile I was tired of the crappy asphalt, lack of shade, and increasingly warmer (maybe low 70s?) temperatures.

I perked up a bit after hitting the 6-mile marker; in my strange little mind there seems to be a large difference psychologically between being "only 1.x miles from done" as opposed to "over 2 miles from done". So, I was able to finish pretty strong, sprinting the last quarter mile down Ocean Beach.

Thanks to those expensive RFID tags, we were able to see our results almost immediately; I finished in 01:15:38.290, which made me 4182nd overall, 1044th among women, and 338th among women in my age division. It also calculates to 10:09 per mile, which means I almost hit my stretch goal of 10-minute miles.

Anyway, it feels good to be done, even if I am still dehydrated today, after having drunk at least eight bottles of water yesterday.

Next up, Machu Picchu via the Inca Trail. I think I'm just starting to realize that I'll be in Peru in less than two weeks! Time to hit the stairmaster and dig up all that camping gear...

new best time!

I ran today's St. Patrick's Day Fun Run in 27:20. I was really impressed with myself at first, because the run was advertised as 3.5 miles long, which would have meant sub-8-minute miles. Unfortunately, after talking to some coworkers with foot pods, we concluded the run was actually only about 3.2 miles. Ah well, even 8:54 per mile is a new personal best for me (for distances over 2 miles).

motivation

I'd been debating signing up for this year's Bay to Breakers all week, ever since a friend asked me to join him.

Today, I found out that my spinning instructor is turning 50 this year. 50!! I would have guessed she was maybe 40, except that she'd mentioned her "15-year-old" a few times before, so at some point I'd revised my mental estimate to "early 40s". This woman teaches multiple spinning and pilates classes every day, has two teenagers and a husband who does triathlons, seems to be in Tahoe every other weekend, and regularly bikes and runs on weekends as well.

Anyway, I decided to sign up for the race. I figured I better get started now on the being-in-shape-when-I'm-50 thing.

milestone?

Last Thursday, I think I may have hit a milestone.

I was running on a treadmill, and somewhere near the fifth mile, my legs started to give out, and my lungs were fine. My legs were actually so tired that they refused to move fast enough to keep up with the treadmill's motion, and for a split second I actually felt like I was going to fall off the machine. Yay for increased cardio fitness!

Although, I guess the alternative explanation is that my legs were having a bad day.

4 x 10k relay

I ran in a 10k relay yesterday afternoon, along with 3 of my co-workers. We finished in 52:52, which translates to an average of about 8:30 per mile. I think I was probably slightly slower than average, so probably about 8:40 or 8:45 per mile, for 1.55 miles. That would make it my fastest run since junior high, for distances between 1 and 2 miles. Yay me.

longest run ever

I went to the gym yesterday to run on a treadmill. Between my workout buddy being late and me getting engrossed yet another episode of Stump the Schwab (apparently I know a lot about NFL running backs from the late 90's and early 2000's), I ran for over 45 minutes thinking I'd only run for about 30-35. When I realized how long I'd been running, I figured I was within a few minutes of the 5-mile mark and just kept going. I ended up running 5 miles in 48:48, which is now officially my longest run ever. Yay me.

first 5K this decade

In elementary school and junior high I was forced to run on a daily basis. I was pretty bad compared to the rest of my class (best mile: 8:32, best 3 mile: 28+; both times among the last five finishers) and so I grew to hate running.

Nowadays I run on a treadmill at least once a week for 4+ miles, but for some reason the idea of running outside is still a little outside my comfort zone.

Last week, the gym at work was advertising a 5K fun run with T-shirts and prizes, and I told myself that if I could get someone else to run with me, I'd sign up. Several people that I talked to all signed up, so I did too. And I ran.

I finished in 29:27, making me 74th out of 127th, about which I'm quite pleased. I guess my standards are lower now.

After spinning class that afternoon where I biked another 17K or so, I treated myself to dinner at Old Port Lobster Shack. I ate an entire lobster roll (plus coleslaw, plus chips), and probably 8 or 9 Rhode Island mid-neck clams. Yum!