The first LSD walk of the new racing season

Happens this Saturday along the San Francisco waterfront . It will only be an 8 miler , but its the longest walk Ive done since the Rome marathon in mid March and I can’t wait to get out there. The starting point for all my long distance training walks, is the Justin Herman Plaza , located directly across the street from the San Francisco Ferry building. I will follow the Embarcadero along the waterfront ,sometimes all the way across the Golden Gate bridge. I will walk anywhere from 4 to 10 miles in each direction for a total of 8-20 miles depending on my training schedule . Btw..If you’ve never walked the SF waterfront, the scenery is awesome. (The photo for my blog header was actually taken at mile 4 during one of my training walks).

I would like to also extend an open invitation to anyone interested in accompanying me on any of my San Francisco training walks. I depart from the mentioned starting point at 8am sharp!   If you’re interested and want to know more about my current walking schedule, email me privately. I do my ,long walks at an LSD pace of 16-18 min/mile with appx 3-4 short racewalking intervals , thrown in per mile after the first 3 miles of the walk. I do my racewalking intervals at appx an 8-9 min/mile pace. So, if you’re a not a walker, you can jog, and I can still keep up with you ( if my lungs behave).

Ive only been out of the hospital for a few weeks, and while my I’m eager to start training , my lung function has declined somewhat( my baseline FEV1 is now hovering around 34% ), but more troublesome than my lung function, is the persistent leg and lower back muscle pain Ive been experiencing for the past 6 months(a side effect of the prednisone) I’ve never had to deal with this new pain before. Everything hurts , so Im not exactly sure how my body is going to handle even a short 8 mile walk. This weekend I should get a pretty good sense of how the rest of the training season will go , or for that matter, whether there will be training season at all.

Ive already signed up to do 3 more races this year, separated by only a few weeks, and each one significantly more challenging than the previous. The first is a 5K at the San Francisco marathon in August, followed a couple weeks later by a 21k in the high desert, and finally a full marathon in Portland on Oct 5th. Actually, I have mixed feelings about walking the Portland marathon for a 3rd time, ( a 44 k is a long walk) , but even if I don’t, I’ll be spending the weekend up there to support the friends of mine who have never done it before.

My goal of course , for all these races, is to PR. Ive never done a 5k race , so I guess that would be an automatic PR . As far as a hilly 1/2 marathon at a mile high elevation , who knows what will happen with that one. And as for Portland, this would make it my 3rd time . Maybe it would be a charm. In the two previous years , I managed to knockoff almost two hours off my finish times . Wouldnt it be great if I could knock off another hour? That would put me somewhere in the 6 hour range ( the equivalent of a 3 hour marathon for a healthy runner). Yeah, that would put a smile on my face.

PS………Today I completed my 600th trip across the
Al Zampa Bridge