Yes, dearies, I ran in the 5k portion of the San Francisco Marathon yesterday.

It was my first-ever race on U.S. soil, and it was absolutely wonderful. The 5K run/walk was held at the Embarcadero, passing by the Ferry Building, the Bay Bridge and the AT&T (formerly SBC) Park. If you haven’t been there before, and if you pace yourself so that you’re not huffing and puffing too much, the race can actually qualify as a mini-tour.

Summer in San Francisco usually means cool, 65-degree-Fahrenheit (about 18 degrees Celcius) mornings ,and it was just that yesterday. But you wouldn’t have known it, on seeing all the men, women and even kids in their running shorts and tees, raring to go at the Starting Line.

As for me, I was well warmed-up from a piping-hot cup of coffee, a brisk 10-minute jog, and some early-morning hugs from the most supportive hubby/personal cameraman/last-minute coach/unabashed cheer-er around.

Yup, Markie was there, making sure I consumed my carbs the night before, joking me out of a pre-race anxiety attack, and yelling out loud, monosyllabic cheers that must have confounded his fellow spectators. (As in, “GO, ‘GA*!” Hehe.)

Click on the “play” icon on the above video, which was caught using our Nikon Coolpix camera. If you squint really hard and don’t get vertigo from the camera-shake, you might even be able to see me in it. I’m the tiny runner in the white top and blue shorts . See me wave in Markie’s general direction, even as I’m trying to run past several runners at the same time. What a camera hound, eh?

(The second half of the shot is mostly just of orange highway cones and specators’ heads, because Markie was trying to get a shot of me crossing the finish line but our camera didn’t have the zoom range).

And lastly, here is the food I ate after the race, at the Hyatt’s breakfast buffet:

yum!

Well, there goes the “healthy” diet. But then again, I’m still in training to run a 10k race next…

============================

*‘GA is short for palangga, a Visayan word loosely translated as “beloved”. It’s a term of endearment Markie and I often used for each other, which we alternately use with “pssst” and other words not fit to print here.

Posted under Running

I went on my “long run” last Saturday, and yesterday I was still feeling tired, creaky, and achy. Not a good thing, since I was supposed to do my “intervals” workout, which consisted of running really fast for a few hundred meters, followed by moderate jogging.

I told Markie I didn’t feel like going to the track. Later on, I changed my mind and said I’d go, but I’ll only be walking around.

So that’s what I did for about 2 laps (800 meters). After that, I felt ashamed that the 8- , 10- and 12-year-old kids from a local school’s sprint team were zipping past me, so I went into a slow jog. Then I paused to do stretches.

I’d just do a 30-minute warm-up instead of my usual 20-minute one, I told myself. So back into the track I went, slogging on slow and steady, slow and steady.

Thirty minutes came and went. I was no longer feeling very creaky, but my legs still felt kinda heavy. I decided to extend my “warm-up” for another 10 minutes.

Feeling a bit better after 40 minutes of just warming up, I chose a starting line up ahead. When I got there, I sprinted some 200 meters, my hands pumping the air, my legs pounding the track. Then I went into a moderate jog for two laps. And then repeated the process, one more time. Sprint. Jog. Then one more time after that. Sprint. Jog.

Wow, that felt really good.

By the time I did my cooling-down jog and stretches, I was feeling very, very good. I thought I could even have done more, but the track was closing as it was now sundown.

So, yesterday I re-learned that all-important lesson: the first step in getting fit is getting off your butt.

Posted under Running