4:02:42

https://www.strava.com/activities/659990662

missed my <4:00:00 goal, but given the elevation and my 'first timer' status and [lack] of preparation [3 total runs over 13 miles all year, and only 1 since early feb lol] I'm happy with it.

Mark Zuckerberg did the first half lol, didnt see him but saw the pics

I negative splitted ever so slightly [~2:02:30 and 2:00:15], but my legs gave out on me relatively early. I think the downhills were harder on me than the up. Not enough hill training this year.

I felt like my cardio system was operating well in the 'safe' zone, just have to toughen up my legs to speed up a bit from here.

carnage report:

right quad starting cramping around mile 11 a bit, twinging. This was disconcerting. I didnt want any bullshit until mile 20 like that, wasnt prepared for my body to start failing so early lol. By mile 16 and in the "shit" as I was planning for it [the final hilly area of Golden Gate Park, miles 13-19] my left quad starting feeling like my right had, and now my right was getting worse and getting harder for me to stride properly.

Legs gradually kept getting worse through golden gate park but I made it out only about 2-3 minutes over my pace goal so I felt with the rest of the course being basically flat, that I was ready to hang it out and break 4 hrs

So in a mixture of pain, cramping, fatigue, and all that I start dropping the pace to ~7:45 -- 8:30 or so for as long as my legs hold out which was right until about mile 24-ish, from there I had to slow up to ~8:45 pace or so which I knew would miss my goal so I struggled a bit to rally and try to bring my pace back down.

I failed and my legs then progressed to actually giving out right at/around mile 25. From there I couldnt hold a pace much under/at 10:00/mi and held that through the end.

My peak negative thought occured around mile 24 when I contemplated taking my shirt off and walking off the course lol as it started to feel like a major bonk was coming. That was a little premature but I also realized there was no way I was running 8:00/mi pace in the flat section of the embarcadero to sneak under 4:00:00 that I had been shooting for since leaving golden gate park. Just couldnt do it so for a moment or three I contemplated walking off. Then I started realizing how ridiculous a DNF right on the embarcadero would feel so I moved into 'plan B' or 'plan C' which was simply "dont walk"

Still I consider it a really good effort giving my preparation/lack of long runs. I ran a conservative race and found the wall more or less about as late in the race as you possibly can. Couldnt ask for a more complete effort with my fitness level.

I'm also pretty happy to have split the first half only 2 minutes slower than what I did 15 months ago, and then ran a back-back half barely 15 seconds over 2 hrs on top of that. I've come a long way

not a bad result imo for averaging 20mpw all year /few long runs
*of course, I thought I could break 4H in spite of all that, and I guess I got awfully close. I'm sorta wondering if I hadnt just 'legged out' some of the flat/crowded sections a bit better if I wouldnt have gone under 4H though. I had to play a bit of frogger in a lot of sections and when stuck behind people running 9:00/mi or slower in flat ground I just said 'fuck it' and followed, figuring I'd 'save it' for later

side note: I am now a clif blox afficionada I believe. pounded [4] complete clif blox bars, 1 per mile so miles 1-24 lol. In training this rate of consumption was making me sick but I toughed it out haha. Only had to skip 1 or 2 miles of consumption of these for feeling queasy but I made up for it lol. Skipped the final [3] water stations [sub 30 minutes to go/figured no point] and finished super dehydrated lol. Probably drank a gallon or so at the finish.

race morning i ate 1 cliff bar protein thing [the 20g protein bar], one starbucks black coffee to get the pre-race poop going [worked!], and took a starbucks protein coffee [20 more grams!] with me to the starting line. Figured a little protein in the system could only help. Yay for race-day experiments lol

Made (zero) bathroom stops, and never felt like I had to pee. I was dehydrating the fuck out of myself apparently [heavy sweater lol], I walked through every water station, drank the nuun electrolyte drink, half the water cup and poured the other half on my head was my 'style'.

I believe I need to drink more than this actually. Some of these water cups couldnt have had more than 3 oz or so in them, they were like 1/3 full. Since I was going slow I even had to pour water for myself once or twice lol [everything wiped out by the 1500 ish full marathoners and 2500 first half marathoners that started in front of me that were going faster than 9:00/]