Sheri - Back from the Brink

I signed up for a fun ‘tune-up’ race in preparation of my April half-marathon, the Emerald Across the Bay 12K in San Francisco on March 15.  The main attraction of this race for me was the run across the Golden Gate Bridge.  After a lifetime in the Bay Area, I’ve never walked across the bridge.  I have a vague recollection of  having sulked in the car as a teenager while my parents took some out of town visitors up onto the bridge.  After two years as a runner, I was due for a run across the bridge to be checked off my list of things to do. 

While it would be totally do-able to drive to the shuttle bus pickup point on Sunday morning, I figured it would be more fun to spend Saturday in the city and stay the night in the Fisherman’s Wharf area. 

We got kind of a late start driving up (my fault) and hit all the traffic being diverted around the parade on Market Street.  So we parked as soon as we could, and walked down the several blocks to Civic Center Plaza where the parade ended and the ‘Irish Festival’ was taking place.  I guess I should have been expecting it, but hubby and I have been to many Celtic festivals, and this was more what we were looking for, but the SF Irish festival was just a gathering of all the stray vendors that would normally set up elsewhere in the city, some multi-ethnic food booths, and about three large corrals for green-beer drinking.  Apparently St. Patrick’s day is now the Irish Mardi Gras, because everyone was sporting many strands of green beads, and a couple of the parade ‘floats’ had members tossing green beads to the crowd.  The ‘floats’ consisted mostly of flat bed trailers holding various groups of people drinking beer and waving to the crowd.  Having just watched the SF Chinese New Year parade just about a month ago, this was just more lame than words can express.  We left very quickly to go grab some lunch far away from the drunken green-wearing Irish wannabes.

We made it to a shopping mall but gave in to a substandard food court meal because we were STARVING.  The Mrs. Fields frosting decorated chocolate chip cookie was totally un-called for, but worth every calorie.  YUM.  We then drove over to our hotel, checked in, and I spent a blissful couple of hours reading magazines while hubby took a nap. 

I rousted hubby out of bed so we could go eat dinner.  We wandered around the Ghirardelli Square area a bit, but I just wasn’t feeling like a tourist meal, paying double for mediocre food just because of the view.  So we walked up Columbus Avenue to the North Beach restaurants.  More St. Patrick’s revelers!  We had a really hard time deciding which restaurant to choose, so hubby opted for Washington Street Bar and Grill, because we had gone there AGES ago (it was when I was pregnant with my oldest son, we saw Diane Sawyer there that night).  Yeah, we have no imagination and we don’t like to try new things.  The restaurant had closed a few years ago and was now under new management.  Problem is, there is a large bar area directly next to the seating area, and we were seated at a tiny table squished next to the half-height wall keeping the bar patrons segregated from the restaurant.  Why did we agree to sit there?  Because we are spineless, that’s why.  So we spent our dinner alternating between being forced to listen to drunken people yell their conversations at each other, and trying to yell our own conversation.  The evening was capped off by the bus boy dropping a cup of ketchup on hubby’s leg, then hubby discovering that his steak meal was really a plate of stale French fries with about 5 ounces of steak and a pathetic wilted pile of spinach leaves, and then two guys started leaning on the wall behind me to carry on their conversation about 1 foot from my right ear.  We did get a free dessert because of the ketchup spill, but with a total bill of nearly $100, I left feeling like I’d just had my wallet stolen. 

The hotel bed was quite comfy, but I did not sleep well at all due to race jitters.  Every time I woke up, I’d tell myself that the race was just for fun, stop stressing, but it didn’t work.  I got up at 6:45, ate a quick banana, made coffee and got dressed.  I took my coffee with me to walk to the shuttle bus stop, in the drizzling rain.

This race usually draws about 5,000 runners, and they run it in a three wave start.  I was in the second wave, so I took my place in the loooong line for a yellow school bus across the bridge.  There were many comments about running in the rain, and ‘why did I sign up for this again?’ Once we made it over to Fort Baker on the Marin side of the bridge, there was more standing around in and even heavier rain.  The race had a sweats check here, and I debated for about 30 minutes whether or not to check my now drenched sweat jacket and track pants.  I finally checked it after all just a few minutes before the second wave start.

The race hits a pretty steep uphill pretty quickly as it makes it’s way up to the bridge.  I could hear everyone huffing and puffing even over the music in my earphones.  I walked the last quarter of that hill just to catch my breath.  We were not on the bridge roadway, but on the pedestrian section, so there was only room for 2-3 runners across for that portion.  I just tried to keep from stepping into puddles, as my main concern was keeping my feet somewhat dry, which kept me from enjoying the view as much as I’d have liked to.  I found a guy who seemed to be going my pace, so I tried to stay about six feet in back of him as other people passed me.

The downhill from the bridge was at just the right angle that made running fun and fast, just lean into it and let gravity help you fly.  The course then makes it’s way to Fort Point and then a turn around to proceed along the Golden Gate Promenade to the finish at Aquatic Park.  Since this was more of a recreational race for me, I kept to a sustainably hard pace.  By about mile 6 it really started to rain, and my socks got well and truly wet.  I had on a pair of thick winter weight wicking socks and they did their job well, my feet stayed warm and I had no blisters.

I finished in 1:10:50, which is a 9:30 average pace, 43rd out of 169 45-49 year old ladies.  That is just one place out of being in the top quarter of my age division, and I was firmly in the top third of the women.  The rain kept quite a few people home (wimps!) because there were less than 3,000 finishers this year.

Hubby and I stayed a while at the post race festivities where I collected my free goodies, enjoyed some hot coffee, then got too chilled in my wet clothes to stay any longer.  We went back to our hotel and I enjoyed a blissful hot shower thanks to a 12 noon checkout time.  We then went out for some lunch (at one of those touristy restaurants with a view), but I stuck with a grilled chicken sandwich in order to save my running calories for a truly divine ice cream sundae at the Ghirardelli ice cream fountain.  It was called a ‘Mint Bliss’ and it most definitely Minty and Blissful.

Hubby drove home, and I put the seat back and slept the righteous sleep of the truly tired.  Thanks sweetie, for another fun race experience.  You are the best pit crew ever.