Nike Women's Half Marathon: Pre-race fun

It's been hard for me to sit down and start writing about my weekend in San Francisco, simply because I have overwhelmingly too much to write about.  In a good way.

And there are so many pictures to share.  So so many.  Starting with this one:

I give San Francisco full credit for the beauty of this picture, not my super
amazing iPhone picture taking skillz.

So go grab a glass of wine (or your drink of choice).  Then grab a comfy couch spot.  Snuggle up to your pup (or your pet of choice), and let's get started.

Saturday

Erica picked me up at 4:00 am to head to Sea-Tac and make our 6:00 am flight to Oakland.  We chatted to entire flight (so much for "reading" or "sleeping" as I'd originally intended--chatting is much more fun).  We arrived in San Fran around 8:00 and waited for our friend and fellow runner Dorothy to pick us up from the airport.  She'd conveniently lived in San Fran for 12 years before moving back to her hometown Seattle, so she became our official tour guide for the weekend in her rented car.  I must say, without Dorothy's generosity, tour-guiding, and general good cheer, this weekend would have been a completely different one for us all!  Thanks Dorothy!

From the airport we went straight to check into our hotel, which happened to be right in Union Square where the Nike Women's Expo was taking place and right across from the purple name wall at Niketown.  Nike does a great job of making this race feel special for so many reasons.  This is one way--publishing every participant's name on the wall outside of Niketown.

25,000 names.  There's mine!!  (Poofy North Face makes me look huge!)

And for extra proof:

I am not related to the other Kaplan next to me.  I think there were about 10
Kaplans on the wall.  There are lots of Kaplans in this world.

The wall was probably the most exciting part of the Expo.  They set up a tent in the middle of Union Square, filled it with loud music, a few vendors set up in an awkward, inconvienient way, incredibly long lines, and not-so-great samples and deals.  All of the race apparel was in Niketown, which was again blaring music and crowded beyond belief.  One of the reasons that I disliked living in NYC was the crowds.  I get claustrophobic, uncomfortable, and tense in large, packed areas and simply can't wait to get out.  I wasn't always that way, but by the time I left NYC I had developed this issue and it has only magnified in the past few years.  I couldn't wait to get out of there and start exploring the city I hadn't seen since I was a kid.

So our first stop after the Expo included breakfast and these:

Yes, it was the day before the race.  Yes, there is
champagne in that OJ.  I don't care I was on vacation.

And then it was time for our guided tour of San Francisco, courtesy of Dorothy.  The first thing we did was drive as much of the half marathon course as we possibly could.  This included heading down Market St. to the Embarcadero, heading around Fisherman's Wharf, down Marina Blvd and through the Presidio.  

Another gorgeous view of the bridge from somewhere in miles 4 and 5.

This whole part seem flat, easy, and totally doable.  Then we hit the hills at what would be mile 6.  Up a huge hill from Crissy Field pretty close to the on ramp of the Golden Gate Bridge.  We climbed Lincoln Blvd, our jaws dropping as we kept going up and up and up.  Then Lincoln Blvd took a steep hill down only to head back up again.  

After cruising down Camino Del Mar, we cut our way over to Clement St, which starts off flat.  And then it goes up and up and up some more.  At one point, I turned around in my back seat in the car and looked backwards down the hill we had just driven up, and it looked like a cliff.  A long, steep, steady cliff.   And this is when we REALLY all kind of freaked out a little.  Five of us girls in the car, trying to ready out minds to climb these crazy hills in less than 24 hours.  With deep breaths, we kept driving to see where the last 3 miles of the race would take us.

Luckily, those three miles included a steep decline down the Great Highway, some flats and slight inclines ("slight" compared to the mountains we'd climbed before) as we ran east through Golden Gate Park, then a downhill finish (yay!! Something to look forward to!) as we U-turned through the park and headed back down to the finish line on the Great Highway.

By the end of this little drive, I couldn't decide if it had helped or hindered my anxiety towards what I had always known would be a hilly race.  All "secret" hopes of a PR were slipping slowly from my mind.  This was a tough course.  Despite living in Seattle and tackling some extremely hilly courses there (the Seattle Amica Half Marathon, Whidbey Island Half, even the Seattle RNR), none of them compared to what we faced in this course.

So instead of lingering on thoughts of impending doom and struggle, we spent the next few hours resting our legs as we toured around the city in our comfy ride.  We saw all the great neighborhoods, of which I can barely remember half of their names (Mission, Castro, Noe Valley, North Beach, Downtown, etc, etc).  We took a quick trip across the bridge into Marin (pronounced /mar IN/ not /MAR in/) county and down into Sausalito.  We saw the "sneaky squirrel" viewpoint of the bridge:

Emmie, Erica, me, and Regan.  Dorothy once again wanting to be the picture
taker and not a part of the picture :)

We waited in line to be a part of the winding train down Lombard Street:

Switchbacks!  For cars!  Can you imagine actually living on this road?

We stopped by the Painted Ladies so I could take a picture for my mama.

A gorgeous row of historic Victorians, framed by the city skyline.
A beautiful juxtaposition.

And then of course we had to make a quick trip to the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

History happened right here.  Hippiedom.  Free love.
This is where it all went down.

And then, after hopping around the entire city in just one day, we headed back to North Beach for a delicious pasta dinner at Calzone's and a stop for some gelato (which I did not partake in--no extra dairy for me the day before a race!).

At dinner, Erica and I re-examined the race plan we had configured on the plane that morning.  Instead of starting at an 8:50 pace and seeing how we felt from there, we decided to bump it back to a 9:00 pace and resign ourselves to the fact that it would not be a PR race for us.  Not with those hills.  As much as we wanted it, it couldn't be in the cards.

Little did we know...

My overall impression of San Francisco (having seen it as a grown adult for the first time): a sweet, charming, big city.  Larger than Seattle, but with the same neighborhood feel, each neighborhood having it's own particular character and charm.  But wandering around downtown reminded me a little more of being in NYC because it had more of a big city feel than Seattle, without that crushing feeling that NYC sometimes induces.  Although, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little nostalgic for NYC in this larger city.  If sometime in the future I for some reason had to choose another place to live, San Francisco would be at the top of list.

And then after dinner, it was back to the hotel.  Time to rest up.  Early to bed, early to rise for one of the most surprising races of my running "career."

Which I will tell you about next time :)

I know the suspense will kill you in the interim.  Good luck with that.