Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Arun Gupta is a technology enthusiast, a passionate runner, and a community guy who works for Sun Microsystems.

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Monday July 27, 2009

San Francisco Half Marathon 2009 Completed - Personal Best so far!

I ran San Francisco Half Marathon 2009 yesterday and here are the results:

I'm excited about the results because improved my timing by almost 3 minutes. And running on Golden Gate Bridge is always a great experience. As always, the race was very well organized starting from expo to bib/tee-shirt distribution, well marked course, water and medical stations, local community support, buses from half marathon finish line to start line and every thing else. A few possible improvements are listed below.

I saw Dean Karnazes (50/50/50 marathon man) and met Bart Yasso (Yasso 800 man) in the Expo. There is certainly a wealth of knowledge to pick up from these elite runners.

The overall results are as shown:

Click on the image above for complete results.

Couple of sugested improvements to the San Francisco Marathon organizing committee for the next year ...

Really, really, really qualify runners in Wave 1. Ask them for a qualifying time from a previous race or something. Walkers and 10-minute milers are NOT Wave 1.
Separate the course going on/off the Golden Gate Bridge, not just with orange cones, but with an additional rope. Otherwise slower runners spill over on the other side and almost bumping into the faster runners.
The expo hall had a wonderful set of exhibitors but it became really crowded as the day progressed. Either an alternate location or back to Market/Embaracdero next year is a better option.

BTW I already registered for the Half Marathon 2010 and got a nice bib#: 1111. The online registration for 2010 San Francisco Marathon is open until Aug 7th. See you there next year!

Here are my two personal goals for the next few months:

Run a half-marathon with 7ish pace
Qualify for Boston - probably next year

11 major marathon mistakes says that "marathon pace will be about ... 16 seconds more lethargic per mile than half-marathon clocking". If that is accurate and will hold true for me, then both of my above goals are well meshed with each other :)

And many thanks to my family for bearing with my weekday early morning runs and long runs over the weekend!

I've run 95 hours and 26 minutes, a total 758.93 miles and 166 out of 208 days so far in 2009. Here is a quick chart that shows my running mileage so far:

This chart is generated using an application that I've built over the past few days. Tomorrow, I'll share that entire application on this blog, stay tuned!

Miles to go ...

Technorati: running marathon results training boston runsfm

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running | Comments[3]