#DreamBig : 13.1 in all 50 states : DreamBig 2013

STATE #13 - San Francisco, California
Rock N Roll San Francisco
Finishers: 5,827

April 5, 2013
I arrived late into San Francisco and Cooper picked me up from the airport. This was a big race weekend for me because obviously it was my first race of 2013 and my first race after coming back from my tonsillectomy over Christmas. "You got your tonsils out - big deal" you may be thinking. But coming back from that throat surgery was actually more difficult than I thought it would be. From December 20, 2012 until New Year's Eve, I wasn't able to eat anything and I quickly lost about 15 pounds. For me, that means all of my muscle got eaten and I had to start over from the ground floor. I remember being out in Salt Lake City, UT with Cooper the first week of January and I was trying to run for like 5 minutes on the treadmill and I ended up in a fit of tears on the floor of the hotel gym so frustrated about being weak. But, I used that and this race as motivation to get back on track and to make this year another one for the books. So I trained - a lot. I got back on a strict running and workout regiment to regain strength and stamina and sure enough I was more than ready for race weekend.

So back to San Francisco. I arrived and Cooper picked me up from the airport and we head to Oakland where he lived. It was the first Friday of the month and in his neighborhood they have something called "First Fridays" where they close down the street outside his apartment and basically have a little street festival with booths and food and music. We had a good time just browsing and getting a few things to eat before calling it a night.

April 6, 2013
We packed up our bags and made our way into the city for the next few days. If you haven't realized it now, I have bad race anxiety and so to defuse any race morning hiccups, I decided to book a hotel near the race start so we didn't have to worry about the commute into San Fransisco from Oakland in the morning. Call me silly, but the BART has strikes a lot. So we stayed down near Fisherman's Wharf close enough to the start line. During the day, we went on several adventures on the street car and bus to go to the race expo and just around town to sightsee. The absolute biggest perk of the day was going to the Cardinals game!

It just so happened to be opening day for the Giants and because the Giants had won the World Series in 2012, they had a lot of fun opening ceremony events for Buster Povey (who we got a bobble head of) and it was just exciting to be around the game atmosphere of baseball again WITH the Cardbirds also in attendance. As always, I got nachos because nothing says Ashley is a fatty and loves Cardinals baseball better than ballpark nachos. The Cardinals won and we made our way back towards the hotel where we grabbed dinner near Pier 39 getting some seafood pasta -- and picking up some rations for the morning and heading back to the hotel for the night.

April 7, 2013

The start of the race was about a mile from the hotel but not a bad walk and the weather wasn't all that bad. After some last minute snacking, we head out the door and made our way down to the start of the race which was out on one of the Piers - I think Pier 41. We had some time to kill so Cooper hung around with me while we waited for the sun to come up and watched the cool fog lift off the water.

Game Time!

Waiting for the race to begin

#1 Cheerleader

Waiting patiently - more than likely feeling horrid.

Once the race start got closer, Cooper went to get in position and I finished my mental prep on my own. Super excited to get the 2013 kicked off.

Start Line

When the race started, I remembered feeling good from the very beginning. For the first mile or so, I was running behind a bigger guy wearing a shirt that said "Security" on the back so I did my best to stay a few steps behind him in order to entertain myself and pretend he was my body guard. Once he slowed down, I had to say so long. I saw Cooper around Mile 1 and then he ran off to his next viewing area. It was a bit of a surprise because a lot of the first 4 miles were a winding mix of uphills and downhills along the coast on switchback roads. I did good on the climb and I must thank my training for that.

The biggest highlight of the race was obviously running over the Golden Gate bridge. Since the bridge itself is about 1.5 miles all the way across, it took up a large chunk of the race. Cooper saw me as I was about to head over the bridge and the next 30+ minutes I was just in awe. Once we got to the opposite side, we veered off the street and head down and under the bridge before looping our way up and heading back across. When I had hit Mile 7, my phone started to ring so I answered it to find Kali calling to ask when my race was -- um, right now. I am currently on the Golden Gate Bridge and I am feeling awesome. I really was!

ProPic: By Cooper

We made our way over the bridge and back down to the coastal park where we somehow ended up on a sandy path -- did NOT see that coming. It slowed me down a little bit but nothing to worry about. The end of this race was one where you could see Ghirardelli Square from really far away but you still had a really long way to go. Corner after corner of coastline, I kept my pace and in odd, coincidental fashion "Eye of the Tiger" came on for my last few minutes of hustle to the finish line.

I hadn't been concerned about setting a goal for my time but I crossed around 2:01 which of course made me start to wonder if getting under 2 hours was attainable in my future.

I made my way through the snack line and into a field where I basically just had to stand and wait for Cooper to come find me. It's a hidden talent of his -- he can pick me out of any crowd (the hot pink shirt probably helped a little).

OFFICIAL RACE PIC - 13 states down, 37 more to go! #DREAMBIG

Once we reunited and I told him about my race, the next stop was icecream. Yes, it was 9:30 am and I wanted icecream -- that was the deal. We made our way to the Ghirardelli shop where most people were getting coffee so I could get my cone.

9:30AM icecream cone

After checking out of the hotel and cleaning all of the sweat off, we made our way back down to the Pier where we had brunch at the Pier Market before doing some more San Francisco exploring (aka I spent a ton of money shopping).