Fin

I successfully completed the half-marathon on Sunday! Thank you for all of the encouragement and support I received through the training. I definitely appreciated it.

Race day started at 5am when I rolled out of bed, threw on my running gear and gobbled down a bagel with peanut butter, a banana and a luna bar. We arrived at the start line at 6am in Union Square with 20,000 other runners. It was an unbelievable mass of people. The start was staggered by mileage time and about 4 minutes after the gun went off, I hit the pavement
running. The beginning of the course went through the financial district to the Embarcadero, past all of the piers and through Chrissy Field. Just after running by the Golden Gate Bridge at mile 6, the first monsterous hill approached. I thought the worst of it was over when I reached the peak, but no such luck. The next 3.5 miles were full of running up and down hills through the Presidio and Lincoln Park. Around mile 10, the course flattened and we had a great view of the Pacific Ocean. I could see the finish line and was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the course took an abrupt left had turn into Golden Gate Park. By then, my legs were burning and I'd been trying to work through some knee pain that had appeared around mile 9. Miles 11 and 12 seemed to go on forever...As I flew past some volunteers handing out Ghirardelli chocolates, I realized the finish line was only about 500 feet in front of me. I threw it into high gear, squinted at the clock to see what my time was and realized I'd beaten my goal time by almost 15 minutes. I crossed at 02:04:47, tired, out of breath and thinking that when I run my next half, I will shoot for a sub 2hour finish time.

Official results are posted here:
http://results.eternaltiming.com/event/NWM2008 under the 'find athlete' link. I was bib #9445

and (not so attractive) pictures are here: http://www.brightroom.com/go.asp?41296148
What's next?!?! Hyannis Half in February and Cycling...