San Francisco Half Marathon Recap ...

Location: San Francisco, CA
Date: 7/31/11
Temperature: 54 degrees
Official Time: 2:04:09 for 13.1 (9:29 per mile)
Garmin Time: 2:04:09 for 13.26 (9:21 per mile)
Place in Age Group: 208/1067
Place in Gender: 569/3547
Overall Place: 1565/6255

The Good:

Lululemon Pre-Race Shake-Out Run: On Saturday morning, G and I met up with our buddy Bart Yasso (and 40 or so other runners) for an easy 3 miles hosted by Lululemon.

It was a super way to see some of San Francisco by foot and to spend some time with our West Coast blogging buddies, including Aron, Katie A., Rad Runner and Alyssa (They are all wicked cool. Be jealous).Afterward, we headed to the Ferry Building (basically my favorite place on the planet) for coffee and some delicious vegan donuts.Yum!

The Location/Views: San Francisco is an awesome city and the race course offers some amazing views. This is a shot from Vista Point, mile 7.5 of the race.

Plus, how many people can say they have run across the Golden Gate Bridge? Not many. And that experience makes running this race an experience not to be missed.

Race Logistics: The San Francisco Half Marathon is hands down the best run race I have ever encountered. From expo to finish line to post-race shuttle, everything went off without a hitch. Plus, the race tees and medals were sweet. I know of quite a few races that could benefit from adopting some of the procedures used by this race.

International Running Flag of Friendship: I got the chance to add to the International Running Flag of Friendship during this race. Here I am with my flag ...

If you don't know how the IRFoF works, each participant runs with a small flag of their choice and then it is sewn onto a larger collective flag. Then after you're done, it gets passed along to another person. I think it's a cool concept to unite runners from across the globe.

Miles 1-10: G and I had been told by more than one person that after mile 10, the course was "fairly flat." We took that to mean that the major climbs were before mile 10 and then after that there would be "rolling" hills. Um, no.

We crushed the first 10 miles. We were on pace to get G her sub-2. We flew over the bridge. Even the monster hill at mile 10 didn't break us. Then the downhill at mile 11 helped us gain back whatever we had lost on the last climb. If it had been "fairly flat," we would have been fine. But we were spent. We executed our race strategy perfectly. Unfortunately, our race strategy didn't match the course ...

Running with Kim: G and I were fortunate enough to meet up with Kim and her hubby, S, before the race.
It was awesome to see her again and to log the first few miles of the race together (we ran You Go Girl! last September on Team Will Run for Ice Cream). We had a blast spending time with them and I think we are uber-close to getting them to visit us for an East Coast race ...

The Weather: 54 degrees. Overcast. Light Winds. Can you really beat that?

Our Outfits: G and I wore the Team Sparkle Traveling Skirts for the race.

And like usual, we were wicked cute and got about a zillion shout-outs along the course ...

The Bad:

No Sub-2: After crushing the race through mile 10, our legs died. And so did a sub-2 half. But G did walk away with a PR, so it wasn't a total fail ...

The Ugly:

Miles 11.5 - 13.1: After a mile long down hill from 10.5-11.5 (which trashed my quads), we thought it was supposed to be "fairly flat." Instead, we were faced with a mile long climb up to Golden Gate Park. My legs had NOTHING left. It was soul crushing. We should have known though. This was a sign at the expo ...


Our Post-Race Attire: G and I planned to spend the day in San Francisco after the race (we stayed in Berkeley). So, we packed our bags with clothes to change into. Except that we kind of didn't bring pants or new bras, which left us walking around in wet clothing. Fortunately, we hadn't gotten rid of our pre-race "throw-aways," giving us something to wear. Unfortunately, we looked like two homeless people walking the streets ...