Nike Women's Marathon 10/19/2008

Sunday morning, 3:00am Pacific Time and the alarm is buzzing. Time for Naomi and me to get up and get moving, the bus departs for the start line at 4:30 and we need to be ready by 4:15. The good news is we have only been in San Francisco for two days and kept our bodies more or less on Eastern time. Nice day on Saturday, breakfast from the "Primavera" kitchen set up at the Farmer's Market behind the Ferry Terminal Building - outstanding food. Then I hopped on BART for a visit with some Porsche friends at EASY in Emeryville (Thanks to Jim Breazale and Ron LaDow for the rides from/to BART stations), capping the day with a TNT Pasta Party. Having gone to bed about 8:00 the night before the Sunday morning hour is not quite as beastly as it sounds. Almost, but not quite.

Up and dressed quickly, then I'm off to the Denny's a block away from our Fisherman's Wharf Hilton hotel. It's an easy way to get a real breakfast before a long day using lots of calories (about 2926 calories burned during the race). Back for a team photo before we board the bus for Union Square and our 5:30 start time.

It's dark out there at 5:30 am, and with about a 10mph wind off the bay, and air temperature below 50, not exactly a warm and cozy place to wait for the starting gun. Temperature feels almost right for a penguin - and guess who turned up at the Start Corral? None other than our friend John "The Penguin" Bingham, there to wish us all well and support his friends. Somehow despite the hour and the chill we all manage to smile for the camera once more before the start.

The course is very scenic, with dawn just breaking as we pass the base of the Golden Gate bridge, then turn to go up Lincoln Blvd. over the Presidio. Our route rises from 30 feet above sea level to 240 feet over about 1.25 miles, but they keep telling us "we don't use any cable car hills".

Across the Presidio heights we go, passing Robin William's house, winding our way up and down then over to Seal Rocks, past a very small coffee shop which reminds me of a Harry Chapin lyric "It was an early morning bar-room" from his song "A Better Place to Be"). Then we go by the Cliff House restaurant and down the hill onto the Great Highway, where we can see the finish line tents. The bad news is we are only at mile 10, and have to turn in to Golden Gate Park.

Through GGP, all the way back (and up) to the art museum, with the Half Marathon course cutting off before mile 12. Why am I doing the full instead of the half? Turn around at the art museum and go back towards the Pacific, with the Half Marathon course rejoining about 1/2 mile before we exit GGP. They turn right to their finish line about .2 miles away, we have another 10 miles to go. I ask one of the course marshalls if the left turn is for the fully certifiable and he just laughs. There must be some good reason I'm doing the full instead of the half?

The Full Marathon course turns South on the Great Highway, past the Zoo, 3 miles or so around Lake Merced, then back up the Great Highway. No pictures, this part of the course is pretty boring until we come back onto the highway, by which time one is usually brain dead and has forgotten they even own a camera. By some supreme mental effort it seems to me my goal is perhaps within my grasp, but to attain it I absolutely must move faster. Trust me, after 18 or so miles on the course, your ability to do math is lower than a 3 year old's, but somehow I figured it out.

Finish line is literally in sight (you can see the tops of the tents for over a mile) and I managed to work up enough energy to make the last mile my fastest mile. Met my goal of finishing in 6 hours and 30 minutes. My first time in 2005 was 6:50, so it's getting better. There to welcome me is our friendly Penguin, John Bingham. Nice to see a friend at the finish, thanks for all your support John. Just to make it easier on your eyes, here's a finish line photo of Naomi getting her Tiffany sterling medal from the firemen at the finish. We all get the same medal, but we don't equally appreciate the delivery method.

We (the 4000 TNT walkers and runners doing the Nike Full and Half Marathon) raised $18 million for leukemia and lymphoma research from this event. Even got a nice write-up for some of our folks in the San Francisco paper on Monday morning. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/20/BAH413KMD3.DTL

Here's a link to photos by Naomi and I during the weekend. http://adobe.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=d4oq73e.6mafb412&x=0&y=1ogxjt&localeid=en_US

Tom
- Faster than I was, slower than I hope to be if I ever do a Full Marathon again.