DSE Marina Green 5K 9/6/09

My favorite Sunday long run is from home to Fort Point, at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, and back.  (That run will have have to wait for a future blog post, though.)  It is pretty much 10 miles.  From the bridge, I can add mileage either running across to Marin County, through the Presido or with a couple of shorter additions.  On this particular day I decided to add the DSE Marina Green 5K (formerly the Walt Stack Memorial 5K), which was along the way.

The race starts at the Marina Green Parking lot, goes along a bike path at the edge of Marina Boulevard and then follows the Golden Gate Promenade (a big dirt path along the shoreline of the bay).  The Marina Green is the long narrow rectangle of grass in the middle of the photo.

It looks much bigger at ground level.  The race proceeded to the right in the photo, made a jog toward the bay at the corner of the marina and continued on the dirt strip at the bottom right of the photo. 

I ran to the Golden Gate Bridge (5 miles) and back to the Marina Green (about 2 1/2 more miles).  Then I waited for the race to start.  The race was well attended with 221 finishers.  This was my last hard workout before the DSE Lake Merced Half-Marathon on September 20.  So, my goal was to run at a steady tempo pace at around 6:25.  I ended up running it in 19:38.  That was a little slow for a 5K, but a little fast for a tempo run at an average of 6:19 per mile.

Next, it is on to the DSE Lake Merced Half Marathon on September 20.  At that point I can evaluate my training to see if it made any difference in the race.  The Bridge to Bridge 12K is after that. 

Fort Point/Golden Gate Bridge Photo: parkconsevacy.org (c) Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

Marina Green and Downtown San Francisco: Low Altitude San Franciso/Telestar Logistics

Race Photo and Start Line Panorama: Paul Mosel (c) 2009