Maybe I’ll catch that darned cable car NEXT year!

I got out there for the Cable Car Chase after basi­cal­ly neglect­ing my train­ing for a month. I don’t real­ly rec­om­mend tak­ing a month off, but I learned some­thing about over­train­ing, I think. I’ve done some swim­ming and gone to one run train­ing ses­sion in the last month, and I’ve been to the gym a cou­ple of times, but basi­cal­ly have not run at all since I did Run Hit Won­der last month.

I was going to be very pleased to fin­ish in under an hour, con­sid­er­ing how slack I’ve been, and con­sid­er­ing that my time at the Run Hit Won­der 10K, only about a half mile longer but much less hilly, was just under an hour—and that was a great run for me!

I got out there and the first thing I noticed is that my heart rate was much low­er com­pared to my breath­ing. I was breath­ing real­ly hard run­ning on the flats with a heartrate of around 160. I used to go up to 160 with­out breath­ing hard at all. So either my lungs are hav­ing prob­lems (which I’ve noticed when swim­ming) or my heart is get­ting stronger. I’m going to be an opti­mist and say both.

I kept my eye on my heartrate through the flats, but then pushed hard up Nob Hill on Cal­i­for­nia Street. I saw my heartrate hit 200 as I approached Pow­ell Street. Don’t lec­ture me on heartrate; this is race day, not train­ing. I’ll keep my heartrate low for train­ing, but race day is about giv­ing it all I’ve got, right? Any­how, I did keep my heartrate in the more rea­son­able 185 range the rest of the run after the Nob Hill Climb.

I sur­prised myself by being ahead of where I thought I’d be as I was watch­ing my time, and made a note to myself to adjust my goal, that I should be shoot­ing for sub-10 minute miles rather than a one-hour fin­ish. I saw the fin­ish line and thought it was done and start­ed push­ing hard­er, only to find that the course took an unex­pect­ed jaunt out to the end of the Munic­i­pal Pier and back. Should­n’t have been a sur­prise; it’s right there on the back of the T‑shirts we all got for reg­is­ter­ing! So I slogged through after I had giv­en my “final burn” but just kept telling myself “keep­go­ing­keep­go­ing­keep­go­ing” and put in a lit­tle bit more push when I saw the direct line between me and the finish.

My offi­cial time: 49:47. I came in #194 out of almost 400 fin­ish­ers. I’m in the top half of reg­is­trants, but I don’t think I made it to the top half of fin­ish­ers at the time that the results were post­ed. In any case.… 49:47! Thats an 8:47 pace! OK, that’s not fast for most of the folks on , but that’s a big leap up for me, and it’s on a course with a pret­ty substantial/steep hill. I don’t know for cer­tain, but I think Cal­i­for­nia Street is as steep as 17 per­cent toward the top!

So just maybe I was over­train­ing a bit before and need­ed to get some rest to get a lit­tle bit more wind under my wings. Right now I feel great and I’m psy­ched to get back to run­ning more reg­u­lar­ly in the morn­ings again. This is what it’s all about!