SF Marathon Trainees @ Sports Basement

For this Saturdays’ Long Slow Distance (LSD) run, we all gathered at the Sports Basement store in Portrero Hills.
I dread the car parking situation in the City, so I drove in my little red scooter into Portero Hills and found a nice cosy spot right outside Sports Basement, in-between 2 oversized SUVs. It was cold outside and I had worn my Jeans on top of my running shorts. So I went into the Men’s Room at Sports Basement to change. By the time I came out, the faster runners from my pace group were already on the run. So I started running with a much slower pace group led by our SF Marathon Pacer Larissa. 10 minutes into the run along 16th Street, I caught up with the other SF Marathon Pacers Amit and Jess and some of the trainees including Luis and Steve. Both Amit and Jess usually pace the 4:00, 4:10, 4:20 or 4:30 hour marathon finish time pace groups.

Running Log – Potrero Hills, SOMA and South Park

Our Running Map ( map my run credit gmap-pedometer.com )

We took 16th Street all the way to the end, and then turned left onto 3rd Street. Somewhere along this stretch, Jay caught up with us. We ran down 3rd Street until we reach AT & T Ball Park. That was around the 1.5 mile mark and all along, I had been thinking that I was running with the 3 mile “Novice” runners group. While I was wondering if I should ask the Pacers about this, another runner in the group asked Amit how much more we were going to be running, and Amit said, “Oh, we have ways to go atleast another 3.5 miles !”

I was horrified, because this meant I have to run another 2 miles than originally planned. But then I thought, good, this just means I am pushing myself more now so that I can increase my endurance and be better prepared for the really long runs !

So we kept running and turned left onto Bryant Street. This was the turn-around point for the run and from here on, it was our run back to the home base @ the Sports Basement on Bryant Street. From here, we entered South Park Avenue, a very beautiful tree-lined street with lots of lofts and small business establishments on either side of a pretty park in the center.

It was here that Jay started talking about the History of this part of San Francisco that I had – until that point – been totally unaware of. Jay told us how the DOT COM boom of the late 90s had all started right there, on South Park Avenue. He told us how he lived in San Francisco much before the boom and bust, and how he had seen the place transform the internet boom and bust of the late 1990s. I had always wondered about the dot com companies ever since I moved to San Francisco.

• Where did it all start ?
• How did it all go down
• what is going on now ?

Little did I know that a fellow training peep would edumacate me ! (Thanks Jay !!).

South Park, San Francisco (Photo Credit: Allan Ferguson @ flickr.com)

We closed $15 million yesterday; we’re doing well.

–Justin Segal, co-founder of StartUps.com at Webby Awards (2000)

We left South Park Avenue and turned left onto 3rd Street again. We ran down 3rd Street until we got to 16th Street, where we turned right towards Sports Basement. Few minutes later, we had arrived at the home base. All told, we had run for about 50 minutes. Our average pace came out to be about 9:26 over 5.7 miles.

Just a block away from Sport Basement, we caught up with the fastest runners of the day, which included Rick, Tom, Angela, Kensley and a few other “Elite Runners” !

South Park San Francisco – Center of the .COM Boom & Epi-center of the .COM Bust !

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