lifestyle

watching people run

On Sunday, Miss L and I headed into San Francisco to cheer on my bff, Audrey, as she raced in the San Francisco Marathon. Auds isn’t new to running at all. In fact, when we were roommates in college, I could easily tell if she had run less than 5 miles in the morning by her disposition (hint: she was a grumpy gus if it was a short run). She’d had a bit of a set-back with knee issues in recent years, but randomly decided that she wanted to get back into running distances and races.

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And while she’d run the 1/2-marathon distance, this was her first attempt at any run over 22 miles! And she was going to be doing it up and down and through the hilliest city in all the land! Who wouldn’t want to go cheer that on!

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We waited around Pier 40/end of AT&T Park (between mile 25/26) to watch her run by us and cheer her on. Miss L hopped out of her stroller and would spontaneously clap and cheer on the runners going past us. She’d never seen a race before, but she somehow knew it was something worth cheering for!

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After she passed by, we walked along the Embarcadero to the finish line to find her among the throngs of finishers! (yes… yes that is Miss Duckling/@beingmichelle/Michelle in this photo!) Luckily Auds’ hubs had height on his side and others could see us… so the whole maze was a bit easier to navigate. (side note: how in the heck did I get taller than the 6’10 guy in this photo???)

And her finishing time? 4:04!!! According to her GPS watch, she actually ran 26.6 miles, so I think she was much closer to her goal time of 4 hours than she thought!

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We hopped over to Gott’s for lunch afterwards… and then muddled around Union Square for a bit as well. In all, it was a nice day spent in the city and all for an awesome friend!

And boy do I feel like a slacker in my half-marathon prep for January! Seeing all of those people running inspired me to be a bit more diligent about my training and get out there and run in the morning. Of course, best laid plans can always be thwarted by baby screams at 4:30am. So it looks like my training regimen begins again tomorrow morning… and I might just begin to bore you with weekly updates so that I’m kept accountable to someone other than myself.

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