Saturday, October 20, 2012

Nike Women's Marathon & Half

We came, we ran, we conquered the Nike Women's Half-Marathon.  By we, I mean Patty,Marisol, Megan, Caryn and myself.  I think I would be safe in saying that we all had a fantastic time.  Most of us had never been in a race of this size and the energy from all the participants, not to mention the amount of estrogen, was really something to witness.  Our fears about the hills were never realized and in fact, it seemed our training prepared us well.  I guess that's one of the benefits of training in a hilly valley.  The only thing we were unprepared for was the number of people, particularly the number of walkers.  Dodging the walkers was the hardest part, other than that, it was one of the easiest races we've ever done.  Maybe it was because we didn't run it particularly fast, running for the experience and to remember the sights along the way.  But for whatever reason, I remember coming down toward the last half mile as I looked over at Patty and remarked how this was probably the best I've ever felt in a half-marathon.  She admitted feeling the same but didn't want to jinx it by saying so.

The weather also was perfect.  Although typically San Francisco wet and foggy, it also kept the weather really cool, a welcome relief from running all summer in the heat of the Santa Clarita Valley.  And of course, there's the Tiffany Necklace.  We were all so worried that we wouldn't like it, but it really is perfect.  I think we're all hoping that we'll be lucky again next year and will get picked in the lottery again.  Hopefully it wasn't just beginner's luck.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Are We There Yet?

Today's run was our last "long" run before the race. We are tapering down and attempted to do somewhere around seven miles. Depending on which GPS device we decide to go by we either exceeded our goal or fell just short. Personally I think we fell just short because the Garmin is usually pretty accurate whereas the Nike+ app on my iPhone has been very spotty. The last two times I used it, it shorted me a mile for every three I ran. Today it gave me an extra 3/4 mile. Maybe it's trying to make up for the last couple of miles it shorted me? Today, it read that we ran 7.44 miles while the Garmin read 6.61. Marisol's Garmin was about the same as mine so I think we only ran 6.6 miles. We were debating on whether to go back around the train bridge to get the additional miles, but at this point in our training, it was probably wiser to go shorter than run too far and tire out the legs close to the race. Either way, we were really moving today with an average pace of 9.3/mi.

That being said, I am getting super excited about our trip. It's weird to think that we won't see Bonnie for almost 3 weeks between our different trips. Also weird to think the next time we see Marisol will be in San Francisco at the Nike Women's Marathon.