Notes
Not as crazy as I think it has been in previous years--seems like the ban on alcohol and floats actually worked since I didn't see any floats, and the only alcohol I saw was a few people watching the race offering beer bottles to the runners. Lots of costumes and a few naked people (who really should have been wearing clothes). Best costume I saw was a centipede dressed up as the royal wedding...with a dude dressed as Kate Middleton in the front.
Not my best run ever! Got off to a bit of a slow start--their idea of a "wave start" was to have corrals A, B, and C all start at the same time (note to self: next year make sure to be fast enough to register for corral A) which meant about 15,000 or so people all trying to funnel across the start line. The other corrals (D, E, F, G, and H) started a half hour later. Luckily I was able to hop up on the sidewalk and get around some of the really pokey people at the start. Saw the first naked person before I even got to mile 1...unfortunately he really should have been wearing clothes. Not totally gross and out of shape, but enough jiggling that it wasn't nice to run behind.
In mile 2 my calves were really tight and were killing me, so much that I really thought I'd end up having to walk a bunch of the race. Then came the Hayes St. Hill...I was dreading it because I thought if my legs already felt like crap, a mile long decently steep hill was not going to help them! I got lucky though--I guess the uphill was enough to stretch out my tight muscles and running uphill actually felt better than running on flat ground. Made it up the whole hill without walking once and passed a ton of people in the process. I'm probably the only person in the race who enjoyed that hill! Then it was mostly flat or slightly downhill for the rest of the race.
The weather was much nicer than the weather people had led us to believe--they'd threatened showers and even thunderstorms, so I took my raincoat and left the sunglasses and sunscreen at home. Of course that guaranteed it would be sunny and I was not disappointed! Ran into a tiny sprinkle around the 6 mile mark but it actually felt good at that point.
Unfortunately I think I screwed up my left knee on some of the downhills--I felt fine after the race, but after walking ~3 miles from the finish line, through the festival, over to Park Chow, and sitting for an hour while I ate, when I got up I had horrible pains in my left knee. Even worse, my best option for getting home at that point was walking over to the 16th & Mission BART station (a bit over 3 miles away). Originally I'd planned to run back to BART so this could be my last long training run before my 6/4 half marathon, but needless to say with shooting pains in my knee that wasn't going to happen! Luckily it loosened up as I walked and felt OK on the flat & uphill parts of my walk, but there was a pretty steep downhill too and that really bothered it. So I think I will be taking a few days off!