Nike Preview run

So, I did the Nike Preview run and lived! :) Better yet - I ran 10 miles! Ok, I ran/walked 10 miles, but who's counting?

Lisa (my adopted mentor) picked me up at 6:15am and we went over to San Francisco. The weather wasn't so great - it was kind of chilly & raining. We got there right around 7am. Our group wasn't supposed to start running until 7:15 so we had a little time to look around, use the bathroom, and get maps. There were probably about 400 Team in Training folks there, and I saw a bunch o AIDS Foundation people training for a marathon as well - so it was quite a crowd!

Lisa had done this run before the last time she was training for Nike so she knew how the course was going to go. She wasn't feeling great so we started out really slowly. I was planning on just trying to do 7 miles so as not to push it too hard. Lisa said she was planning on doing 10 so I decided to see if I could make it to 10 as well. We did a fast walk up the first really steep hill (the hill the Cliff House and Sutro Baths are on for anyone who knows SF). Then we left the road area and went into trails along the cliffs. It was really beautiful and an area of San Francisco that I've never been in before. By the time we reached the top of the trails, Lisa decided that she was probably going to walk most of the course and encouraged m to leave her behind and go at my own pace. So I headed off on my own.

The next part of the course went through the Seacliff neighborhood - I heard some other runners say that we were passing Robin Williams house (it was a very nice neighborhood). We descended towards the Presidio, then turned around and ran back along surface streets to Golden Gate Park. The hills along in the area were pretty devastating. I mostly did a very fast paced walk up them and then ran down them. By the time we were back to Golden Gate park I was getting pretty tired but I decided to keep going. Once Lisa had mentioned the 10 miles I kind of fixated on it. I made it to the 10 mile turnaround point somehow. I was so oblivious that I couldn't figure out why there was a tour bus and tourists taking pictures of a deserted field. So I slowed down and stared - it turned out that the field wasn't deserted - there were buffalo in it! I was just so tired that I couldn't see them!

I did make it all the way back and was even able to run for the last half mile to the finish line. Lisa was there and ran in with me for the last 100 feet. She had only run 6 miles and then stopped because her achilles was killing her. They had massage therapists at the finish line and lots of potluck foodstuffs. The 10 minute massage was awesome.