During the fourth week of officially training for the San Francisco half marathon (totaled 42 miles this week), I’ve come up with three reasons why I might not be ready for the race. Heat. I’ve been running in the heat lately. Summers in Texas are just plain hot…even at night it doesn’t always get below 80. I worry my lungs won’t be prepared for running in 25 degree cooler temps. Which leads me to my second concern. Wind. Depending upon how much wind blows off the ocean, the temps could feel even colder than they are. Which could make breathing harder. I’ve ran in cold temperatures before, but I was also training in the colder weather. No such luck this time. And the third reason why I might not be prepared for the 13.1 miles of San Francisco are the hills. Even if you haven’t been to there before (which I haven’t) you know about the monster hills. On TV, even walking up them appears daunting. I haven’t checked out how much of the course has hills but I do know, we’ll be running over the Golden Gate Bridge.
At least that part will be flat.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:22 am
Wow, that will be one busy/crazy weekend for you! I have a friend who might be in SF that weekend to run the half as well! I trained for a marathon at one point (only got up to 15 mile runs and decided I wasn’t super fond of running that much, lol) and there were the drastic temperature changes but I don’t recall it affecting my breathing too much. Now the hills, a completely different story! But I think you’ll be fine! Plus, you can always walk up one or two if you just need that break.
July 19th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Yep, it’s going to be cooler than you’re used to, and yep, there might be a breeze (I really hope not too bad though!), but we can do it!! As far as hills go, I checked out the course and there are no bad hills! Yay! At least from what I could tell. Just a few inclines here and there, but totally doable. Nothing like the Nike race they have in S.F. where the whole reace is hills. Ugh.
Two weeks to go…