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AWESOME race! I loved every single minute of it! I will do a longer race report later, but here are the highlights:
The course is gorgeous but VERY hilly. If you followed my tweets or my Facebook updates, I might have mentioned the hills a few times. LOL. The views are amazing. It even SMELLS wonderful with all the eucalyptus trees on the route! I saw hawks and PELICANS and of course lots of giant seagulls, and a few men in skirts. I lost Jenny at mile one, so decided to run on how I felt. I planned to run a mile walk a minute, but after mile three when I hadn’t run yet I said to myself, “Self, you have completed 26 marathons. I think you can trust your body and not listen to a beep to pace yourself.”
I hit the halfway point at, as I recall, 2:22:something and was thinking, “Darn, I was hoping to break five hours.” I normally slow down and thought that even if I didn’t, that would take me five hours since I cannot add. Nice brain I have. So I decided to at least do negative splits.
It wasn’t long before I realized I was feeling really good. I mean REALLY good so I decided to go for 10 minute miles.

Long story short…PR. My garmin said 4:31, but I started it before hitting the start line. The clock said 4:34 and I think it took us about 4-5 minutes to get to the start line. No wait, maybe it said 4:33 because I think it was 4:32:45 as I was running up and I was trying to hit the mat before it turned to 4:33.

My previous PR was 4:39:12 so this is a PR by a minimum of 8 minutes, but it might even have been a bit more. Woo hoo! LOVED this race, the city, can’t wait to run here again…maybe SF Marathon in August? Anyone want to join me?

Final official time was 4:30:26, a PR by almost NINE minutes! Imagine if I didn’t tweet and take pictures. I might break 4:20!

Workout:

• Type: Run
• Date: 10/18/2009
• Time: 07:03:58
• Total Time: 4:31:13.37
• Calories: 2531
• Distance: 26.71 miles
• Average Pace: 10:09.14/mile
• Max Pace: 4:01.13/mile
• Ascent: 5,955.02 ft
• Descent: 6,046.87 ft