Day 1
Day 2
San Francisco
Awoke before dawn to a typical fall morning in San Francisco: cool and slightly foggy. Due to our craptastic corral placement it was going to be tough to run a fast race, if not impossible. As soon as the realized the scale of the mob (26,000 runners) and turned the first few corners and got on The Embarcadero by the Ferry Building... the street was a mob of runners and it was absolutely clearly this was not going to be a fast race.
Around mile four or so things started to thin, but they you hit the first major uphill entering The Presidio, and the course is a narrow access road or bike path up-- and it turns into a packed, slow moving mob again. Hills through mile 9 allow some good speed but still not a fast run... final chip time is something like 2 hours flat, GPS time is a 1:58:xx with 13.5 miles of people dodging and weaving, and getting unpleasantly chilly (expected, at least) at the end of the race in the disaster that was the spectator shuttles (aka waiting for Mike's family!).
Abandoned the finish line rather quickly as a result, despite the firemen for all the ladies and all the Tiffany's jewelry for the finishers' medals. Made it back in good time via the shuttles and after cleaning up, proceeded to stuff our faces at a nearby food court in Chinatown. Cheap and fast pho and banh mi, just want we wanted! Wandered more (Golden Gate Bakery was closed, sad!) around Chinatown before parting ways...
More family afterwards. Wandering around Upper and Lower Haight, ice cream from Bi-Rite Market, and surprisingly decent BBQ at Memphis Minnie's (more brisket and tri-tip please!). Then off to SFO, overpriced airport food (rather sad won ton soup... just won tons and cabbage? WTF?), and the end to the Nike Women's Marathon SF weekend.
Best summation of the race: most expensive training run ever. (but also one of the best looking/most motivating...)