Ouch. Exhilarating. Both serve to sum up the NWM12 half marathon that was yesterday.
dark and early Sunday morning and flashing our bibs for all to see ;)
25,000+ people is a whole lot to run a race with. It meant craziness in the corrals, although those were pretty well executed allowing only those with corral specific wristbands to enter and rows of port-a-potties on every block {hallelujah}. My bestie Nicole was there with me, so the wait wasn't too long, and before we knew it, the corrals were slowly moving toward the start. It only took us 6 minutes to cross the start line. Once the sun came up, the fog was revealed, which kept the temperatures low, but the moisture was a pain, since our sweat never dried and the mist made us even more wet.
We meandered through San Francisco's financial district out to the Embarcadero, passing Sf's great sights such as Pier 39, Fisherman's wharf, the Aquatic Park and Crissy field, and then up to the Golden Gate bridge and the Presidio. Too bad it was so foggy, there wasn't a single tower of the bridge to be seen. Now getting up to the bridge was a huge hill with a small path that bottle necked at the base, making progress a little tough.
The second hill was just as bad, but had an even steeper downhill, which hurt something fierce! I've never been bothered by downhill running, so this was disturbing. We plodded along keeping a slower pace that was comfortable and maintainable, running through cute neighborhoods, along the beach, and then into Golden Gate park for the last few miles. Along the whole course there were cheering sections with rad signs {my favorite: "don't poop your pants!"}, costumed cheerers {purple teletubby, anyone?} and awesome girl themed music being pumped loudly to motivate us.
The finish line came into sight, and Nicole and I grabbed hands, finishing with smiles on our faces even though we were hurting. We walked a red carpet to the lovely tuxedo clad firemen handing out those fabulous little blue boxes with our Tiffany necklaces, then continued through the crowd to collect more goodies to feed our marathon starved selves.
Our very own silver platter with Tiffany boxes!
Perfecting our Saturday Night Fever and Wonder Woman poses post race
Nike Women's Marathon finishers!