San Francisco and the Napa Valley Marathon

This weekend finished months of hard core training and long Saturday runs! One of my goals was to complete a marathon before my life gets too hectic (like children!). Daniel has done several before, and agreed to help me prepare for my first. My friend and running buddy, Christie, and I have spent the past five months training together. The only spring marathon in the northwest was the Napa Valley Marathon in Napa, CA. We thought, this couldn't be too bad...26.2 miles of running through wineries! Also, San Francisco wasn't too far away and that was one place I wanted to visit while we we're out here.

So, before dawn Friday morning, we set out on the 9 hour drive to San Francisco. Arriving, late afternoon we had time to check into our hotel, rest up, enjoy the hotel's complimentary happy hour, and have a nice dinner. We were all exhausted that night and decided rather than staying out late seeing San Fran in the dark, we'd get a good night sleep and get rolling in the morning. The lights were out by 9pm!

Saturday morning we enjoyed breakfast and checked out of the hotel before heading down to the famous Fisherman's Wharf. Our mode of transportation for the day were the classic San Francisco Cable Cars. We even hung off the side! We checked out the Fisherman's Wharf, let Dorothy (Grady and Christie's 2 year old) see the sea lions, ate lunch over the water, got a Sundae from Ghiradelli's, drove down Lombard Street (the world's crookedest road), and rode the cable cars back. After lunch we set out to drive over the Golden Gate on our way to Napa. It was a beautiful drive...well, what I saw of it in between naps!

By late afternoon we arrived at the Marriott Hotel in Napa where we could pick up our race packets from the expo. After this, we set out to carb load before the big day. Thankfully, I'd researched an Olive Garden and we ate our fill of breadsticks and pasta. It was now time to hit the hot tub at the hotel and attempt to get some sleep.

At 4am we received our "time to run a marathon" wake up call. Grady drove us to the race finish line where we then took buses to the start line...26.2 miles away! The sun still hadn't risen on that drive, but just as we arrived at the start line a beautiful clear sky came into view. We knew it would be a beautiful day to run.

And THAT it was! It was 26 (.2!) miles of sun shine, warmth, a gazillion wineries, rolling hills, and California countryside. Honestly, the time and the miles seemed to fly by. Daniel, Christie and I stayed together until about Mile 18 when I told Christie to go ahead and keep running. I, apparently, had a prior knee injury which began hurting at the very outset of the race. I was able to run through it until this point, but after 18 miles, was forced to slow my pace to a run/walk. If you've ever run this distance before, you know that it almost hurts more to walk than to keep running. So I made Christie (who was my loyal running buddy) keep running and go ahead of us. Daniel was a faithful husband and stayed with me. This says a lot for a man who usually runs around a 3 hour marathon. We finished together in 5:27...28 minutes more than I'd wanted, but nevertheless, I finished. Christie rolled in about 25 minutes before us. After a visit to the physical therapist on site, an iced knee, and some warm soup and bread, we hurriedly went back to the hotel to shower and begin our drive back. That drive seemed like it took forever, but we made it safely back home.