Now that the 2010 San Francisco Marathon that happened on Sunday, July 25th is over, it's time to reflect on the race, especially after about a week before the race, this article showed up and stirred a buzz to many people running either their first marathon or their first time running the SF Marathon course.
The question now, after having run it, is, was it really as tough as the aforementioned article made it out to be? Or was it just to get the hype up about the race?
Having personally run the full marathon, I am a little indifferent about the accuracy of the article. Don't get me wrong, I had a pretty tough time running this race. This was my second full marathon, with the Oakland Marathon being my first. After reading the article, I began to wonder how much tougher the SF Marathon course could be, seeing as a lot of people said the Oakland Marathon was really tough. Talking to several other runners, who ran Oakland, and who had previously run the SF Marathon course before, the consensus was that Oakland was way tougher than San Francisco. Other people also told me that the first half of the SF Marathon was really hard, but that the second half was easy.
My experience? The complete opposite of what everyone told me. I felt like the Oakland Marathon was a breeze, whereas I really struggled through the SF Marathon-and it was the second half that gave me the most grief, and my time was actually a lot slower than my Oakland Marathon time.
Did I just have a bad race? Maybe. But I ran roughly the same splits in my first half in SF as I did in Oakland, so it's hard to say. Glancing at both the elevation sheets for Oakland and SF, it looks as though Oakland's highest elevation, aka any hilly parts of the course were over and done before the first half of the race was even over. In the SF Marathon, it started out fairly flat, but then there were some hills and inclines that snuck up on runners.
All in all, it was still a great experience, and as I always say, to even just have the guts to run a marathon, is a feat in itself, let alone to finish it. The crowd support and all the the aid station and scenic views were enough to help me pull it together and get through this beast of a marathon!
What are your thoughts on this race and scary articles like the one mentioned above? Do you think there is any truth to them? Or does it just really depend on the runner?
Comments
I happen to agree with everything you said in your article. I too ran the Oakland Marathon. It was my first. I felt that the SF Marathon was a tougher race. The start was very fustrating because I sped accross the Bay Bridge to make the start time, parked in dubious parking space (fearing a tow the whole morning) only to find that the starts were delayed and I ended uwaiting around for an hour - not good in cold weather - tight muscles during the 1st half of the race did not hel. Otherwise everything was good. My time was also much slower than for the Oaklnad marathon.
I agree that the second half was much worse than the first half. It seemed like the hills would never end. Golden Gate Park also seemed to take forever to get through. Since this was my first marathon, I can not compare. However I trained in 90 degree heat and I would take the hills over heat any day. Hills end, heat just gets worse.
San Francisco was my first full marathon, and it was an amazing experience.
I agree that the second half was much harder than the first half. I thought that the hills in the first half were pretty evenly spaced which gave you a chance to recover, but once we passed the buffalo paddock in Golden Gate Park (about mile 14), it felt like it was one small hill after another until about mile 23. The aggregation of the hills was what made it a beast.
I tried not to get to worried about reading those articles and seeing all the hype. One one hand, it is a shame that people might be intimidated enough to not run the marathon after seeing the articles. On the other hand, it's cool to revel in the success of finishing a marathon that is touted as being so difficult. I think there is some truth to the articles, but I think it should be viewed as a means of inspiration and challenge rather than as a deterrent to running the race. I am already looking forward to running it again next year!
I ran Oakland and I've run the SF Marathon 6 times now. They are similar - I think it depends more on how your day went. The 2nd half of SF may SEEM harder, but it really isn't. If you ran the course backwards, it would be much tougher.
Not sure what Larry is talking about - the starts were in planned waves and went off right as scheduled.
I ran both the oakland and SF this year. I did better in the SF with very little training. I think the hills are overhyped in the SF marathon, some are steep but they're not that long. It was flat at the beginning and at the end so that helps a lot.
One thing I found challenging about the Oakland Marathon was that they merged the half-marathoners with the marathoners at around mile 18 and that turned out to be real annoying since I was running at about 8 min pace against people who were running 10-12 minute pace and crowding the water stations. I felt like I was at the start of the race and couldn't find my groove.
Nonetheless, I'm glad I did both races.
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