A run and walk on Bike to Work Day

It was one of those after­noons when I had to either get mov­ing or go to sleep and lose a chunk of my day. Any­thing mod­er­ate would have sim­ply tak­en me back to a nap, so it was that or dial up the intensity.

On my last run I ran 3.1 miles with­out tak­ing a walk break. I don’t like hav­ing to take walk breaks at all, so I’ve been try­ing to push far­ther with­out stop­ping to walk. Today I got it into my head that I should push through to 3.5 miles, and some­how I thought the best way to do that would be to go 3.5 miles out and then turn around.

3.5 miles turned out to be right about at the Fer­ry Build­ing. I thought it would be good to take a pic­ture at whtev­er point I turned around and post it. It’s one way to keep the run reports from being sim­ply tedious—everyone loves pic­tures of San Fran­cis­co, right?

I went a lit­tle past the Fer­ry Build­ing to take the pic­ture. You can see that I took the pic­ture from the North side of the Fer­ry Building.

Right in front of the Fer­ry Build­ing was a table set up by (I assume) the Bicy­cle Coali­tion, with chalk marks indi­cat­ing that it was Bike to Work Day. I rode my bike to the Open Stu­dios Com­mit­tee meet­ing this morn­ing, but I don’t think they mean the kind of bike that has a motor and guz­zles gaso­line. I took the pic­ture and moved on.

Some­thing unusu­al: out in front of the Fer­ry Build­ing were two guys who looked to be in their ear­ly twen­ties out try­ing to get high fives from all the run­ners. I’ve seen things like this at race fin­ish lines, but see­ing this on the Embar­cadero at rush hour was a first for me. The sec­ond time past them I was walk­ing so I could have asked what they were up to. Maybe their idea of a good time is hang­ing out by the Fer­ry Build­ing high-fiv­ing the run­ners? Well, I don’t have to under­stand it in order to think it was pret­ty cool. What­ev­er the rea­son, hand­ing out encour­age­ment to strangers is a great thing to do.

The way back home was a lot hard­er. I may have run the whole way out, but back I walked at least half the way. By the time I got home I was drained, feel­ing hun­gry and dehy­drat­ed. Clear­ly I should have got­ten more food and water into me before I left. I’m con­sid­er­ing start­ing to bring water with me when I run. It’s a pain to car­ry, but I think that a bot­tle of water (and maybe a banana or a Clif­Bar) would have saved me from bonk­ing as total­ly as I did.

I may have to revise yes­ter­day’s  claim that I could do Bay to Break­ers in 90 min­utes. If I’d kept my pace up so that my sec­ond half was the same or near to the same as my first half, I’d make it. Today’s run was about two-tenths of a mile short of the length of Bay to Break­ers, and I com­plet­ed it in 1:39:10.

If I’d brought water and a snack with me, then maybe I could have kept up a slow 12 minute mile pace the whole way back. A fast walk for me is a 15 minute mile. That’s more than ten min­utes dif­fer­ence over three and a half miles. What’s unknown is how much of my fatigue was due to run­ning out of fuel and how much of it was just my lack of con­di­tion­ing. What­ev­er dis­parag­ing I said yes­ter­day about Hayes Street hill, it’s a lot more hill than I climbed today, and it would slow me down. There’s a rea­son­able chance I could com­plete the Bay to Break­ers course in under 90 min­utes, but it’s pret­ty far from a sure thing.

Now my legs have a very delight­ful sore­ness to them. My quads and calves are actu­al­ly hot to the touch. If I were smart, I’d prob­a­bly down some ibupro­fen before I go to sleep, but I think I’ll wait and see how I feel in the morning.