My Bay Area Challenge Experience: Oakland Half Marathon

Read about my experience running the Berkeley Half Marathon.

You’ve run your first half marathon, graduated university and voluntarily jumped out of a plane. After crossing off bucket list items one by one, you’ve reached a point where you wonder, what’s next?

Even though the half-marathon you’ve trained for has passed, you still find yourself running in the quiet of the morning or alongside the amber sun dipping into the sea. As you search for a new goal, you stumble across an email advertising the Bay Area Challenge.

You’ve already completed the first race in the circuit, so why not register for the next race? You can change your mind anytime and have nothing to lose (other than the $100+ entry fee, but let’s table that for now).

Besides, now that you’re no longer in school, what is the burnt-out gifted child in you going to aim for? Everybody knows earning a race medal for people in their 20s is the equivalent of earning a gold star.

After weighing your options, you load up the Nike Run Club App and set up a half-marathon training plan. The next challenge awaits you: The Oakland Half Marathon.

Race Details

Date: March 17, 2024
Race Time (Chip): 1:33:54
Race Time (Gun): 1:34:32
Tummy Troubles: Severe
Playlist: Live Fast Die Young (Oakland Half)
Results: 11th in M20-24, 158th of 2851

Training Begins

I dove into training as early as possible, having learned my mistakes from the first half marathon. Now that I knew what I had in store, I wanted to make sure I was training the right way. The hill workouts, fartleks, and long runs that I had missed training for my first race, were giving me a run for my money (pun double intended).

Although I initially had more flexibility in my training schedule than when I was training for the Berkeley Half, I picked up a job at a local bar (more on this to come) pushing all my training to the early morning before my shifts.

I made it a personal goal not to injure myself training this time. These hopes were immediately crushed after a mere two weeks into training, I shared another passionate kiss with the Berkeley pavement. (I am still waiting to hear Kamala Harris’ plan to fix the Berkeley sidewalks.)

As race day drew closer, I started to invest in running gear to avoid having to scrape together what I could find in my closet at the last minute (Not Demure). Ironically, the race would be on St. Patrick’s Day, so I bought a green running tank for an extra bit of luck.

I paired it with a pair of Nike Running Sleeves that I exclusively saved for race days because wearing them made me feel like an Olympic athlete and I couldn’t wear them on training days in front of the local townspeople. (There is a reason the Met Gala is once a year!)

My sister and I would always eat some variation of pasta before a race day when I used to run track in high school. That was the full extent of my knowledge of carb-loading, just eat pasta the night before and you’re set. Easy.

Since then my body has changed a bit, and aside from the random sharp pains or new bones cracking when I stand up (I am 22 years old), certain foods unfortunately no longer align with my brand image.

For this race, I cooked a spaghetti recipe my late grandfather was known for in our family. It was the perfect idea. I’m carb-loading because it’s pasta (obviously), and it was a nice homage to my roots.

The spaghetti tore through my body like two street cats fighting over a piece of meat.

I’d also like to point out that I started to get sick a few days before the race. Specifically, I woke up one morning and coughed up a tiny bit of blood into a tissue like an 18th-century housewife with Pneumonia.

While I considered whether I could run the race in just a few days, I stumbled upon my receipt for the race fees and the sickness jumped out of my body.

I was going to run this race or die trying. (I am still financially and psychologically recovering from this).

Race Day

The day of the race came and I woke up a few hours ahead of the 7:00 am start time to get ready and catch the BART to the start line. To add to my St. Patrick’s Day luck, I printed out a picture of Irish royalty Paul Mescal and Ayo Ediberi and placed it in my pocket with the message “For the Motherland.” (I sweat so much the photo disintegrated in my pocket).

Instead of checking Google Maps, I decided to just head down to the station and catch the first train headed in the right direction.

You can imagine the horror on my face when I reached the station and found the stairs blocked by a giant metal gate.

I had forgotten that not only do the trains run later on weekends, but it was also only around 5 am, meaning the BART would have been closed right now even if it was a weekday. The anxiety I had surrounding the race quickly turned into hysteria as I planned my next move.

I ended up finding a GIG Car nearby (cars you pick up and drop off in the Bay Area) and Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drifted my way to the starting line. Luckily, the race was only around a 15-minute drive away, so I arrived earlier than if I had taken the hypothetical BART.

Even though I had overcome the crisis of getting to the starting line, I started to feel the inklings of tummy troubles brewing so I went to the bathroom immediately upon arriving (I had learned my lesson last time).

I headed to the starting line after pretending to stretch and copying the warm-up exercises of everyone around me. As I passed the bathrooms, I felt the primordial urge to make another pit stop, but the race would be starting in just a few minutes, and with the length of the lines leading up to the bathroom, I would have missed the start.

As I awkwardly shuffle my way through the crowd, I got flash-bombed by a photographer (it was still dark outside), and lost consciousness for a few sections (see above photo). I load up my pre-race playlist and start to get into the headspace for what I have ahead of me.

The patriotic voice of Whitney Houston yet again fills the air and every cheers ready to start the race. Five minutes go by. And then another five minutes, and we all are still revved up and ready to go.

The announcer’s voice booms over the audience stating that they are waiting for the go-ahead to start the race. So after all the build-up and celebration, we all ended up awkwardly standing around for another 40 minutes. (Cue chirping crickets)

There ended up being a “situation” somewhere along the course of the race that had taken a little bit longer than expected to clear, but they finally began to send it off.

Had I known this would have happened and how long it would’ve taken, I would have expeditiously made my way back to the bathroom and waited in line. However, I wasn’t sure when the race would start so I just held it in and hoped for the best.

After a few minutes of running it quickly became clear that my stomach was threatening to end the race right then and there. By the grace of God, as we reached the first aid station I noticed three beautiful blue porta potties. (I ripped the door handle open like I was escaping from a burning building).

TMI: Not to spoil future races, but as someone who has had to use the bathroom during races before, it’s always so funny to me because the whole time your mind is screaming “FASTER”, but once you finish there’s a good 15 seconds where your body is considering what would happen if you didn’t go back outside and refuses to move.

After stopping to use the bathroom I was zooming. I felt as light as a feather and hit mile after mile. I learned my lesson from the first race and made sure to stop at the aid stations early to drink water to best prepare myself for the more difficult parts of the race.

This was especially beneficial because the sun had made itself an unexpected adversary. The race being pushed back almost an hour meant that the cooler temperatures and shade of the early morning had given way to the blistering summer heat. (and all my beautiful brown brothers and sisters know we have an extra target on our backs)

While my stomach yet again sought to end the race before the finish by cramping a few times at the end, I eventually spotted the finish line and sprinted to the end.

Aside from a few tummy troubles and cramps that arose a bit later in the race, taking that bathroom break early on changed the entire trajectory of the race. I finished around 4 minutes faster than my last race and felt relatively better after finishing.

I took the now up-and-running BART back to Berkeley. After the entire distance of the race hit and I crawled off the train on my hands and knees, I decided it would be smart to stop at Target to pick up a bottle of Dr. Teal’s Foaming Bath Soap with Epsom Salt.

I ended up crashing and sleeping through the rest of the day, but I would feel the runners high for the following day. Seeing not one, but two medals hanging alongside my desk, once again the inner gifted child Neanderthal pirate in me, knew that this was far from over.

With more medals to be won and races to be run, the journey continued.