Quick Post Marathon Update....

The race (The Silicon Valley Marathon) on Sunday was good. I finished a full 26.2 mile marathon in 4 hours 10 minutes. Although this was a little slower than my stretch goal of 4 hours, it beat Oprah (4:29) and P. Diddy (4:14) so I am very happy with that for my first ever marathon.

The first 18 miles were great - I was ahead of pace for the 4 hour time. By mile 20 the 4 hour pace group had caught me and I hung with them for 15 minutes or so until it started to feel bad and I had to let them go (I really could have used a couple of 20+ training runs before racing this). Then I had 3 really tough miles on my own with very few people around. It was pretty demoralising to watch the pace group creep away into the distance as I was plodding along.

By about 24 I was feeling better (as it was only 2 miles home) and kicked it in again, but by then I had lost enough time that there was no way I could hit 4 hours. As I got to the home stretch, Liz and the kids were waiting for me and Nick (5) and Anna (4) ran the last 100 yards down the finishers chute with me, which was awesome. All in all, it was a very rewarding run.

I can now run Honolulu (which is in 6 weeks) with no pressure on time etc. - if it's good, great - if it's slow, no problem. thanks, Alan

Marathon Update - 6 Months into Training

6 months down, 6 weeks to go. $15,285 raised, 499 miles run, 299 miles biked and 0.1 mile swimming.

A few weeks ago I raced a half marathon in San Jose. The main goal was to see if I could do a race without getting carried away running too fast with the crowd. My plan was for a fairly steady 1 hour 53. After a reasonably constant pace 12 miles and a fast last mile I finished in 1:51. That was an 8:34 pace for 13.1 miles. I was very happy with that. Legs weren't too bad after but I definitely wasn't running too much the next few days. Popular belief is if you double your 1/2 marathon time and add about 15 minutes you get your marathon goal (assuming you've trained for it). So I should be able to do 3:57. I feel that at this point I could just declare victory over Oprah and get back to my normal life. With a little extra effort maybe I can even catch Roger Craig (3:54) - our fabulous president may be a little far off at 3:44:52.

But this isn't about "paper victories", it's about grinding out the miles in the blazing heat, so tomorrow I'm running a full marathon! I am supposed to be doing a 23 mile training run in Golden Gate Park, but the Silicon Valley marathon is this Sunday in San Jose. There's not much difference between 23 and 26 miles (Ask me about that at mile 23 if you are around....). But the real difference is going to be the pace. Our long training runs are meant to be SSLLLOOOOWWWWWW at 11:30-12:30 pace. Through some warped & extremely dubious logic, I have decided that this race will be an easier one than Hawaii (less people, less humidity and less hills). If I do this one fast, beat Oprah, & declare victory I can take it easy in Honolulu instead of having to fight my way through 35,000 Japanese runners.I would have liked to get a couple more long runs in (I've done 16, 19 and 20s) and spending the week walking/standing at Oracle OpenWorld wasn't exactly a good way to rest but I feel pretty good so I'm going to give it a try. I'm going to start on pace (9:00) and see how it feels every 5 miles. If it's good, I'll keep going. If anything feels off, I'll slow it down to 10:30ish and take it easy for the run. If all goes well I'll do just under 4 hours.