The day July 25th dawns, I wake up in the morning to get ready and leave the house by 3:30am to Venki's house from where we carpooled to Sunnyvale Caltrain station where our shuttle picked us up and dropped at the start line for San Francisco 1st Half marathon.
We reached at 5:30am. The sight of the bay bridge in the dark was very pretty! There was a lot of energy and noise and loud music playing at the start. I was already liking the experience! It was super windy and I didn't want to wait too long to start the race. So four of us (Meena, Manu, Megha and I) decided to go for an early start with wave 3 at 5:45am instead of the wave timing allotted to all Team Asha runners in wave 5. We were the group of injured and decided
We reached at 5:30am. The sight of the bay bridge in the dark was very pretty! There was a lot of energy and noise and loud music playing at the start. I was already liking the experience! It was super windy and I didn't want to wait too long to start the race. So four of us (Meena, Manu, Megha and I) decided to go for an early start with wave 3 at 5:45am instead of the wave timing allotted to all Team Asha runners in wave 5. We were the group of injured and decided
to run conservatively.
I ran with Megha for the first 4 miles, we did a run-walk strategy for sometime.I was enjoying running along the bay, the beautiful views of the ocean, fisherman's wharf, ghirardeli, fort mason, crissy field..
AID runners wore "Run for India" t-shirts all running together.. it was lovely to see so many runners running all together on the roads and it was definitely enjoyable to have the road all for ourselves and having the liberty of running through the red lights on the roads while the cops held the traffic for runners.
Megha wasn't able to pick up pace and we were running too slow, so I decided to push a bit.. the achilles bothered for a bit but I took my mind off by soaking in the moment, enjoying the energy and the beauty of the city...then came the hill just before the golden gate bridge and saw my Asha buddies (Sandhya, Bhanu, Chakri, Praveen) standing there cheering for me. I was sooo happy to see them and started running faster.
Time check on the bridge and I realized that my math was wrong -that I was doing bad on time and I breezed through the bridge and forgot about the pain, the body was numb anyway due to the cold and sweat and it was foggy on the bridge but it was beautiful! The energy was amazing! there was a band playing at the vista point at the end of the bridge, made sure to have Gu after every 20mins -yea, I was on a sugar high which helped me breeze through and catch up with the 13 min/mi pace. 10 to 11mile patch was baker beach and a gorgeous breath-taking view overseeing the baker beach -it was amazzzingly stunning! The hills took a toll on running pace but the views helped me catch up... made sure I hydrated well and didn't run low on energy by consuming enough Cliff shot blocks and Gu after every few minutes.
Now running through the city and the hills, by this time, I could see most runners walk through the hills compared to the first hill where literally everyone was running through... Very close to entering the golden gate park and the cops were cheering us while blocking the traffic on the roads allowing the runners to pass by. Some folks rolled down their windows and played loud music from their cars... that was cool! :)
I ran with Megha for the first 4 miles, we did a run-walk strategy for sometime.I was enjoying running along the bay, the beautiful views of the ocean, fisherman's wharf, ghirardeli, fort mason, crissy field..
AID runners wore "Run for India" t-shirts all running together.. it was lovely to see so many runners running all together on the roads and it was definitely enjoyable to have the road all for ourselves and having the liberty of running through the red lights on the roads while the cops held the traffic for runners.
Megha wasn't able to pick up pace and we were running too slow, so I decided to push a bit.. the achilles bothered for a bit but I took my mind off by soaking in the moment, enjoying the energy and the beauty of the city...then came the hill just before the golden gate bridge and saw my Asha buddies (Sandhya, Bhanu, Chakri, Praveen) standing there cheering for me. I was sooo happy to see them and started running faster.
Time check on the bridge and I realized that my math was wrong -that I was doing bad on time and I breezed through the bridge and forgot about the pain, the body was numb anyway due to the cold and sweat and it was foggy on the bridge but it was beautiful! The energy was amazing! there was a band playing at the vista point at the end of the bridge, made sure to have Gu after every 20mins -yea, I was on a sugar high which helped me breeze through and catch up with the 13 min/mi pace. 10 to 11mile patch was baker beach and a gorgeous breath-taking view overseeing the baker beach -it was amazzzingly stunning! The hills took a toll on running pace but the views helped me catch up... made sure I hydrated well and didn't run low on energy by consuming enough Cliff shot blocks and Gu after every few minutes.
Now running through the city and the hills, by this time, I could see most runners walk through the hills compared to the first hill where literally everyone was running through... Very close to entering the golden gate park and the cops were cheering us while blocking the traffic on the roads allowing the runners to pass by. Some folks rolled down their windows and played loud music from their cars... that was cool! :)
What an amazing race -full of energy! amazing buddies and team support! I feel so fortunate and blessed to have a set of such wonderful friends and being associated with Team Asha. I love you guys! Makes my life perfect! It was all worth it!
1 comment:
Congratulations. I am sure you must be happy within to achieve this.
Enjoy and Keep running
Sandeep
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