The plane landed in sunny San Francisco Friday afternoon just around noon. A short ride to the hotel and we were off to see the city. More sight-seeing on Saturday and after a pasta dinner it was off to bed for a good rest. 7 AM Sunday morning the race starts and 26.2 miles later I crossed the finish line and it felt great!! The whole weekend is a blur, everything happened so fast and before I knew it the race was over and I was sitting on a plane for 5.5 hours heading east. Although it was over fast it was quite a memorable experience! I met some great people and loved San Francisco, what a great city!
My official time for the race was 5:36:05 which was a little longer that I had hoped, but for my first marathon I think it's great! I am just thrilled that I crossed the finish line. The race started out slow, with 15,000 people it was hard to move! Running by the Golden Gate Bridge and hearing the fog horns blowing was awesome! And, oh, the hills!! They were grueling, long, and hard. There were tons (at least it felt like tons) of people cheering us on mile after mile. It made the race quite memorable. Around mile 20 I thought I would die; between the pain in my knees (due to my IT band) and the pain in my feet (yikes) I really wanted to throw in the towel! After a quick stretch by one of the TNT coaches around mile 22/23 and I was off to finish the race. Stopping every mile after that to stretch out my IT bands I cried my way to the finish line. I can't explain the overwhelming emotion when I saw the finish line. The finish line was right along the coast, I even cooled off in the icy Pacific Ocean!! What a thrill!
So, I'm already planning the next marathon! I know that I can finish within 4 hours and am determined to meet this goal. It's true what they say about marathons beeing addictive!! I will post pictures soon! You can go to the nike marathon website (find the link on this page) and type in my last name or bib#7826 to see pictures from the race.
