Concert and 18 Miles Saturday

It’s been a while, and there’s a lot to catch up on.

Thursday was the night of my fundraising event. It was incredible!

I got to Blue Chalk around 6pm and began setting up everything, but there wasn’t much to do since the people at Blue Chalk did a great job helping me out and making sure everything was set up and ready to go. The band began arriving a little after 7PM, and there were already a number of people in Blue Chalk enjoying cheap appetizers and drinks, so the place looked like it had potential for a good crowd, I had no idea what was about to happen.

As the night went along, the band began to play, people started rolling in, some associated with my event, others with another event, and even more coming for a Stanford Beerpong Tournament. Ah, the power of drinking games on college age life, Only a year ago, that would have been an activity in my agenda.

A lot of friends showed up and it was great to see everybody! I talked with quite a few, though I was outside handling the money, so I wasn’t awarded much time to hang out with the people who came. My mom handled the socializing inside, and I’m pretty sure she had a good time. Many friends were able to chat with friends they hadn’t seen in a while, or with new friends or with portions of my family, in all it was successful. I had expected more people to come, but I’m not sure Blue Chalk could have handled many more, as there were probably about 150 people from Stanford, 50 people at my event and another 100 or so upstairs either there on their own or associated with another event. I’m really glad there were that many people for Whiskey Hill to play for, they played an awesome venue and all of them seemed happy at the conclusion of the event.

I tried to stay away from the booze and was pretty successful, making a point of limiting my consumption to about 1-2 drinks, with the reasoning going towards carb-loading for my 18 mile run on Saturday. On Friday I was pretty exhausted from running around dealing with last second details so I just took it easy and prepared myself for the 18 miles the following morning.

Saturday, I woke up around 6:15 and started getting the rest of my stuff ready for the day. One of my friends was staying in San Francisco with some other friends, and 3 of my other friends were staying there overnight, so I had planned to meet up with at least 1 group while I was up there for my long run. I left my house around 7:40 and got up to Lake Merced at 8:15. I wasn’t sure how the run would go, I didn’t have the big adrenaline rush that had occurred during the 16 mile run, the weather was gloomy and there seemed to be a lack of excitement radiating from the people about to run. This would be our furthest run to date, and it certainly felt like it.

We began by running around Lake Merced, after about 10 minutes it felt like something was in my shoe, so I stopped and checked, putting me behind the rest of the group, when nothing was found I tied my shoe and started playing catch up. It took me a few minutes to get back to the group and by then I was feeling pretty good so I just kept going at a faster than marathon pace (stupidly). At the conclusion of the Lake Merced 4.5 miles, I stopped by the bathroom, but was forced to wait about 5 minutes for somebody to finish so that put me behind about 6 minutes, and then I had to play catch up again.

The women who started after me were in good spirits and we chatted a few times as we were stopped at red lights. I headed up Sunset toward Golden Gate park and then into the park. We passed by some other runners, a carousel, near places I have played baseball, had picnics and shared memories. We continued on passed the De Young Museum, which is incredible and back around and on a course that wasn’t entirely interesting. It was drizzling, cold, and the ground was wet, not optimal running conditions. From about the point we reached Golden Gate Park I began running with Bridget and Ian, who are excellent runners and gave me plenty of pointers in preparation of this marathon. All 3 of us were on the same page and because of this got slightly lost. We hadn’t seen any white flour markings in a while, and ended up in a random park with some other walkers and a little festival with a salami dealer (that’s the truck I saw) and some other stuff going on. Anybody attending must have really wanted to be there since the weather certainly wasn’t outside fair event weather.

We continued on and made our way back to the Great Highway and saw one of the other runners. By this time, my legs felt terrible, and similar to Jello. We ran along the Great Highway and passed by the last water stop. I had begun walking about a minute before reaching the station, and hung out there for a little while as my 2 running partners continued on. When I felt a little better I began to run again, still with Jello legs and beginning to feel a little emotional. I think it was because my body was shutting down and there hadn’t been enough water stops, and the catch up from earlier. In any case, my goal was to finish the day’s run by finishing with my 2 partners. I could see them in the distance but didn’t know if it would be possible to catch them, we took a left on Sloat, and ran passed the SF zoo, and I think back to Sloat, by then I have no idea, completely exhausted and ready to collapse. After finishing I quickly changed clothes and had some food and drink.

I stretched out for a few minutes and waited for other people to arrive, finding out that some of the people who were supposed to run 14, had unintentionally ran 18. My heart went out to these people because of the way I felt, but they hadn’t been training to run that far yet.

When we started to disperse I called my friends to see what was going on, the ones I got a hold of were at the Wharf about to have lunch. I made my way over there finding some cheap and easy parking. I met up with them after walking right passed where they were and having to turn back because I don’t know that area at all. We hung out around the Wharf for a while, and then I drove my friend by USF and then back to their hotel.

Upon arriving home I just sat there and knew my body wouldn’t be too happy the next day. I didn’t want to fall asleep because I wanted the really good nights sleep. The rest of the day was a blur, just that I had some good Risotto at night and went to bed without any injuries. When I woke up at 2:30 it was not out of happiness. My left foot was hurting and it was difficult to bend. I had no idea what to expect and I had a few thoughts on why it could be hurting so much, but didn’t have a solid idea of what was really wrong. I took some Ibuprophen and went about the rest of my day, making some terrible decisions. We had a baseball party and I ended up playing about 35 games of knockout basketball, which is basically running back and forth trying to score before the other person does. By the end of the day my foot was hurting again and this morning when I woke up it wasn’t any better.

The party was really nice, some good pizzas, deserts, and friendly people. I came home and relaxed until going to bed.

This morning as I mentioned was another battle with pain. I was up pretty early so I tried to figure out what was going on, and my conclusion is that it’s a tendon in the front that was just overworked during the 18 miles. I took some more Ibuprophen earlier and it feels good now, but we’ll see tomorrow when I wake up. Hopefully it will feel a lot better after icing it today and not playing basketball for hours.

In all, this weekend was nice and fulfilling, but hard and painful.