The Big one (22 miles)

Final 22 miles long run is ✅ and taper down runs begin. 2 more weekend long runs (technically, short ones now) before the big dance!

*Side note* - I’m running this marathon to create awareness and help raise funds for “Asha for Education”, a non-profit org to help support underprivileged kids in India, more on that at www.sarthakgrover.com) So if you can, please donate! Every little bit counts.

So, this run was supposed to mimic the final run as closely as it could and the backdrop/weather couldn’t have been better - at the Golden Gate Bridge.

And ofcourse, things that could go wrong did go wrong and that was the best part about this run, lots of lessons learnt and managed:

1. Mile 8, left knee starting acting up. Aid station had some “Tiger Balm” but that didn’t help. Well, only solution was to slow down the pace a bit and move forward. I was almost a block behind my pace group by mile 10.

2. Mile 11.5, the Runkeeper app I was using to track my runs....went 💥. It zeroed out, battery on the watch went nuts and the watch shut down. I was only half way through, with a hurting knee and now I lost all my metrics and my HR/pace. This threw me off quite a bit mentally. But moved along somehow.

3. Mile 14, the hill at Presidio came by and just when I thought this was going to be easy cheesy, the knee said nope. Hellz nope. It was hard to even walk down that slope, forget running. I almost thought the day was a wrap at this point, it was not worth injuring myself further. But....miles to go!

4. Mile 16, made a pit stop and refueled and stretched some more. It was time to conquer the Golden Gate bridge. Mile 17.5 and I had to tell the rest of the gang to keep going and that I was just going to walk whatever distance I could. It was game over. Almost.

5. Walked 1.5 miles up the hill to GG slowly dragging my leg around carefully, and soon enough I was at Mile 19. About halfway past the Golden Gate Bridge and met the folks who were on their way back. Quick selfie and we decided we will regroup at Sports Basement since it would be a while before I catch up anyway.

6. Started jogging lightly to not fall behind too much and suddenly I was starting to feel better. It was weird! The knee wasn’t complaining as much or much at all. I picked up the pace a bit and dodging the pedestrians at GG was able to start heading down back towards Crissy.

7. Mile 20 and of course the left knee is feeling good but the right knee say heyyyyy...and then the back muscles go woahhhhh...it was like trying to keep the machine working while systems were going down left and right. So a quick stretch along the way and I was back on my feet and heading back to the finish, slow but steady.

Finished the final mile walking back to the car and realizing that the hardest part of the run was over. When the actual run happens, the crowd will drive the rest of the 4 miles.
​
Easy cheesy. Onwards!