2010 ING Bay to Breakers Verbose

Bay to Breakers Details:

5/15/10 Saturday - We painted the interior of our house for part of the afternoon. I "took a break" and went into the garage to change the front brakes on the Honda. I returned for more painting when I suddenly and inexplicably felt like I needed a walker. My back gave out and I awkwardly sat to the floor and eventually lay flat on my back. The pain was pretty bad and my mobility worse. I made my way to a seat and arched my back the best I could to avoid bending (and bringing tremendous pain to my lower back). My painting day had now officially ended and all that was left was to hobble home. I determined that when either try to remove the nuts for the wheel or torquing them back on, I must've strained my back. Not being able to stand up without holding onto something certainly made me consider NOT racing B2B... but I was determined to apply every home remedy within the next 12 hours to correct my situation.

I iced, patched, rubbed and slept with a heating pad. I made plans with my father-in-law, Ken, to leave NLT 6:45am for the 8am start time.

5/16/10 Sunday - I woke up and felt alot better. Bending over to put on my shoes was a challenge but there was no pain when standing up straight and walking.

We drove into the City, I grabbed my gear and I hopped out of the car at Folsom and Spear. Baracades were up so I made my way to Embarcadero and then back up again to Spear. I saw some tourists from Germany taking a family photo with various B2B freaks in the background. I'm sure it's a pleasant suprise when your vacation to the US coincides with B2B and you can show the folks back home the American Circus.

Ken headed across town to Pacific Coast Highway as I wormed my way through the mass of people in my corral. Eventually I got to the front of the second corral which would put me in front of the floats but still behind alot of other "runners".

I stretched a bit as the finaly 10 minutes passed. Turned on my iPod and started hopping about. Countdown 3... 2... 1... and anti-climactic horn with no movement. It took me 2 minutes (8:01:58am) before crossing the start line and timing strips and then the race was on.

I didn't do much weaving through traffic along Howard St. as I've done in the past. I knew I'd need everything I had to get over Hayes Street hill. As I jogged along with the mass of people in costume and others in various levels of nudity, I missed the first mile marker. I pressed the split on my watch at 00:09:04.

We rounded 9th onto Hayes Street and ahead of me I saw the steady uphill get even steeper near the top. My memory of 3 blocks had erased an additional 2 blocks of uphill horror. I dug in deep and didn't dare look at my heart rate monitor. I guess I didn't notice passing the 2 mile marker either (00:00:00).

My legs had the strength the whole way up but my breathing was getting max'd out. I swore to myself a number of times not to stop and tried to focus on keeping up with the runner in front of me. Unfortunately, that runner gave up, so I scrambled to find the next "runner in front of me". I made it to the top nonstop!(00:23:36) Woohoo!!! and then the slightly out of control descent with a hard left onto Divisadero and then right onto Fell.

As I ran past the panhandle on Fell St., I passed the 3 mile marker with a 8:30min/mile split (00:23:36) and considered I was halfway through the race but I was starting to feel ... tired. My quads were burnt from the climb. Heart rate at 178bpm. A bit above normal but residual effects of the hill. Still not into the 180's danger zone. I had run 5Ks to train and knew going over that distance was going to create doubts in my mind during the race. I got some water in my mouth (not my nose), considered that the course was a net elevation decline from this point and pushed on.

As I entered the park, I started to feel better. I got in the zone and tried to speed up. Surprisingly, I was able to pull negative splits throughout the race even on Hayes St. hill because the speed I picked up on the backside toward Divisadero. I got even faster through the park on JFK as I headed for Great Highway.

Somewhere near Mile 6 they snapped some photos. I put them in the slideshow to the right along with some post race shots.

As I got near the ocean, I felt the cool air and just let my legs do their thing. I turned onto Great Highway and wanted the finish line to be a lot closer but one final push and I was done. The clock was wrong but my stopwatch read 59:30 which incidentally was the same as B2B chip time. Cool.

Met Ken at the corner of GHwy and Lincoln after grabbing come water. Once I got my commemorative t-shirt and realized Footstock wasn't at the Polo Fields, there was no reason to hang around. We walked 5 blocks to the car and much to my relief Ken drove us home.

No mobility problems after the race or throughout the day but just a matter of time. It takes 2 days for most of the pain to set in and as of Tuesday I was hobbling down the stairs laughing from the pain because my quads were so sore. Didn't keep me from running on the treadmill every day this week but not blogging every workout for now...

Business: Bay to Breakers 12K. 7.46 miles in 59:30 @ an average 7:59 min/mile pace.
Splits are as follows:
Mile 1: 9:04 (0:09:04), 97bpm
Mile 2: 8:59 (0:18:03), 165bpm
Mile 3: 8:03 (0:26:06), 178bpm
Mile 4: 7:38 (0:33:44), 182bpm
Mile 5: 7:30 (0:41:14), 183bpm
Mile 6: 7:20 (0:48:34), 182bpm
Mile 7: 7:15 (0:55:49), 184bpm
Mile 7.46: 3:41 (0:59:30), 186bpm

2min Recovery: is anyone's guess...
AvgHR: 165
PeakHR: 191
MinHR: 93
TotCal: 1065

Run. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

=RUMBLE

164lbs.