San Francisco Marathon
I thought Athens Classic Marathon would be my first distance run overseas. But, San Francisco has a different plan for me. I got to know about the upcoming San Francisco Marathon on 25th July, while having breakfast in Sunnyvale Hotel (through a runner, and yet another software engineer on a business visit to California, whom I first met in an i-Race in Bangalore). A couple of hours later, I was one of the registrants for Full Marathon.
A quick browse through the Marathon website casually reveals that Wall Street Journal calls this race as The Race Even Marathoners Fear because of those famous hilly stretches all over San Francisco. Now, I have an opportunity to validate this claim by a prestigious news paper, and a chance to get a first hand experience of running up-hills and down-hills before going to the Mecca of Runners :) So, why not ?
The marathon course covers the best part of San Francisco: Road along the Sea, Golden Gate bridge, Golden Gate park, Down-Town etc., The above graph shows the elevation through the marathon course. 4-5 decent up-hills, 3-4 down-hills and around 50% flat course. Some stretches with 3-4% inclination. I have started up-hill training on treadmill, just a couple of weeks back with up to 1.5% inclination (45 degrees = 100%). Don't know where to train down-hills :( There is a strict time limit of 6 hours to get a huge 3.25'' finisher's medal. I hope, I will be holding one, when the clock ticks 12:00 on the coming Sunday :)
A quick browse through the Marathon website casually reveals that Wall Street Journal calls this race as The Race Even Marathoners Fear because of those famous hilly stretches all over San Francisco. Now, I have an opportunity to validate this claim by a prestigious news paper, and a chance to get a first hand experience of running up-hills and down-hills before going to the Mecca of Runners :) So, why not ?
The marathon course covers the best part of San Francisco: Road along the Sea, Golden Gate bridge, Golden Gate park, Down-Town etc., The above graph shows the elevation through the marathon course. 4-5 decent up-hills, 3-4 down-hills and around 50% flat course. Some stretches with 3-4% inclination. I have started up-hill training on treadmill, just a couple of weeks back with up to 1.5% inclination (45 degrees = 100%). Don't know where to train down-hills :( There is a strict time limit of 6 hours to get a huge 3.25'' finisher's medal. I hope, I will be holding one, when the clock ticks 12:00 on the coming Sunday :)