Still running

In case you are wondering—yes, I'm still running! I took the week off after the Honolulu Marathon, but after that went back to my schedule of running for about 30 minutes twice during the week, and then doing one longer run on Sunday. Last Sunday I ran about seven miles, and today about nine. I have to estimate how far I'm running by the time it takes—no more nicely measured and laid out courses. But I'm still enjoying running in Golden Gate Park.

My goal now is to run in the SF Chronicle Marathon in July. I'm hoping to cut at least a half an hour off my previous time, so I'm training at a 3:2 run/walk ratio (three minutes running, two minutes walking), instead of the 2:2 I trained at for Honolulu. So far so good!

And, in case you're wondering, the AIDS Marathon will continue accepting donations in support of runners until March 15, 2002, so it's not too late to kick in a few bucks and help people living with AIDS in the Bay Area.

The Day After

The big advantage, I found, to paying $10 in advance to have your Finisher Certificate laminated is that you don't have to stand in a long, long line to pick it up the day after the race. You get to go up to a table behind the main tent and get it without waiting. Here's mine, along with my Finisher medal and shell lei. You can see that my official time is 6:57:02. I finished 15589th out of 19217 total finishers, and, thanks to the mixup that got me entered as a male, I find that I'm 9429th out of 10632 males in the race. :)

I feel really good today, especially considering how totally exhausted I was at the end of the race. Besides the six months of training, I attribute it to sponging down my legs with ice water at all the water stops. It made my legs feel much better during the race, and I think it helped keep down the swelling and soreness after the race, too.

Now I can spend my last two days in Hawaii purely as a tourist. Today, I visited the Waikiki Aquarium, and tomorrow I'll go to Pearl Harbor. Then Wednesday it's back home, with great memories, strong legs, and the good feeling of knowing I've helped raise a lot of money for a good cause. Thanks to all my wonderful supporters!

Marathon Day!

The race begins with fireworks just before 5 am.

The first hour and a half of the race is run in the dark, through downtown Waikiki.

We run along the side of Diamond Head. After a few morning showers, the day becomes warm and bright with high puffy clouds.

I pose at the end of the race with my Finisher's T-Shirt, shell lei and Finisher's Medal. I won't get my official time until tomorrow, but according to my stopwatch, I finished in about 6 hours, 57 minutes. I'm thrilled to have finished in just under seven hours! I'm tired and sore and sunburned, but very happy. I had a great time!

Waikiki

This is the view from the lanai of my hotel room at the Sheraton Waikiki in Honolulu. I arrived here Wednesday afternoon after a looooong day of travel. Getting up at 5 am for an 8:40 am flight is just, well, awfully early in the morning. However, I keep reminding myself that on Sunday, the Marathon will be starting at 5 am, and I'll be getting up at something like 2 or 3 in the morning to get there on time. And then, running/walking for 26 miles. Someone remind me why I'm doing this? Just kidding. I remember why: All the parts of San Francisco I've seen that I'd never seen before. New friends. A resting heart rate of 62 beats per minute. And over $3.6 million raised (so far! still not too late to donate!) in the Bay Area for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.