2008 Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Half Marathon

Today I ran my first Half Marathon – 3.1 miles more than I have ever done before! The longest run up to this point was a 10 miler a few weeks ago as part of my training for today's race.

I had 2 goals.... Finish in under 2 hours and be in the top 6,000 finishers that got a medal. The rain, wind and a crowded start did not make the first goal easy but I finished strong with just under 2 minutes to spare. And the medal is cool :-)
Here are my split times with comments for each mile of the race:

I did a pretty good job of managing my HR... My plan was to run hard for the first 3 miles, recover a bit during miles 3-9 and then start picking up the pace. And oh yeah, sprint once I can see the finish line :-) It turns out that that the race course was there to help me with a 2.5 mile downhill stretch starting at mile 5. My lap times only reflect my efforts to pick up the pace on the 9th mile... After that, wind and rain slowed me down despite my best efforts.

Here's the HR & elevation graph:

The course map is to the left... The route can also be viewed Google Maps and Google Earth using data from by Garmin GPS. As always, full MotionBased Data is available.