Nike Women's Marathon 2012 Weekend/Race Report

This past weekend my sister and I went to San Francisco (with two of her best friends) to run the Nike Women's Marathon (NWM).  We signed up for the lottery last year and didn't get in (luckily, since she had already convinced me to sign up for the Marine Corps Marathon), so decided to try again this year.  Somehow, our party of two got selected, which brought us to SF the Friday morning before the race.

We stayed at Petite Auberge which is really all sorts of fabulousness.  I won't go crazy with the details but highlights include:

• Location three blocks from Union Square (home to the race start. race expo, and VERY upscale shopping)
• Free fresh baked cookies (chocolate chip was my favorite), delicious home-cooked breakfast, and wine with h'ordeuvres everyday
• Super friendly staff and guests

Pre-Race
After checking in and eating at least four chocolate cookies each (fresh from the oven) we headed to the marathon Expotique (no plebian marathon expo for NWM, no sir) to pick up our packets with our bibs, but no T-shirts.

My sister: "Where are our t-shirts?"
Nike helper lady: "You only get those when you finish."
My sister: "WTF?"

Okay, she didn't say that last part, but she might as well have.  Seriously - WTF?  I guess you don't get any of the good stuff (more on that later) unless you actually run the darn 26.2 miles.

We spent the rest of Friday and all day Saturday doing what you should be doing if you are planning to run a marathon - walk up and down steep hills (hello, SF) eating lots of good rich food (hello, macaron).

Sis and I Saturday at the biggest and nicest farmer's market I've ever been to

My sister and her friends had never been to SF before and I was just running this thing to support her.  This was just going to be for fun, so I didn't mind the walking.  SF is a beautiful town with some pretty cool stuff to see.

Race Day
I know I already said our hotel was awesome, but being one block from our corrals doubled the awesomeness.  We were able to get up relatively late, get down to the start, do bag check, go to the bathrooms, and stand around with a few thousand of our closest friends with plenty of time to spare.

About half an hour before the race, this is the corral behind me.  It was about to get a lot more crowded.

I hung out at the very back of my corral (Sis was in a different corral) because I was looking to meet up with someone I had met at the Diva's half marathon the week before.  We never did meet, but being at the back didn't hurt me in any way.  I'm going to give it to the race organizers, they really listened to past criticisms and the corral system was great.  There were lots of port-a-potties and by the time we got near the race start there was plenty of space to run.  I wasn't running (saving that for the the start line), but everyone else was running about a block out.

I hadn't really trained for this marathon much.  After Pumpkinman I was pretty tired and pretty lazy, so my training consisted of one long run a week.  I got up to 21 miles once thanks to my friend Sam.  Normally for marathon training I would do three 20+ mile runs.  So while I was sure I could finish I was thinking it was going to be much much slower than my PR.

Oh, and did I mention there were hills?

This doesn't look hard...

The race starts out pretty flat, but get serious around mile 6.  My first eight miles was pretty slow (~10:00 miles) thanks to the lack of training and the (beautiful) hills of SF.  Due to my Garmin dying during Pumpkinman I don't know for sure when I started picking up the pace.  My end average pace was 9:16 so somewhere in those 26.2 miles I must have been hauling butt a little because I'm pretty sure my last six miles were on the slow side too.

Overall, the race was pretty uneventful for me.  I tried to keep a fairly even pace once I started running a bit faster.  My feet started hurting around mile 18 and I was just ready to be done with the race.  During the last "hill" (really a bump) I started walking because I was really tired, but this girl I had been running next to for the previous three or four miles encouraged me to start running again and we ran together almost to the finish (I slowed down a lot in the last quarter mile and she pulled away).  Thank you random girl whose name I can't remember right now for pulling me along.  I was happy with my time given the circumstances. Would I have liked to run faster?  Absolutely, but I think given my fitness and training I did the best I could have possibly done and that makes me very proud.

I was pretty done at that point.

The end of the race, which everyone probably knows about, is as pretty darn cool.  There are firemen in tuxedos with Tiffany's boxes holding finisher's medals on a silver tray.  I took a picture of this with my phone, but I think the Noggin erased it when he was playing with my phone.  Suffice to say, that was pretty exciting.

Sweet!

After getting my medal I got my finisher t-shirt (finally), which could not be anymore florescent green.  I know these bright colors are the rage right now now, but I am not a fan.  Additionally, florescent green does nothing for the Asian complexion - nothing.

The finish area had a stretching tent (very cool), a changing tent, and a finisher's boutique.  I wasn't feeling the merchandise at Niketown before the race, but was definitely more excited to purchase something after I was done.  Also, Niketown before the race was a feeding frenzy of almost unmatched proportions.  Anyhow, after I took advantage of these amenities, I settled in with my sister's friends and this cool cowbell they had picked up at the cheer station (thanks, ladies) to welcome my sister in.

I think I almost had more fun cheering people and ringing my cowbell than I did running the race.  It was really fantastic to see all those ladies accomplish something special and to yell (encouragement) at random strangers.

On a side note - like the Diva's Half Marathon the week before, where it was impossible to spot anyone you knew wearing pink, at NWM it was impossible to spot anyone wearing purple.  NWM supports Team in Training (TNT), whose color is purple.  It seemed that every other person was part of TNT so when my sister decided to wear a purple tank for the run, we found it pretty challenging to spot her.  However, she was wearing a white hat (who knew this would be differentiating) and her friend was able to spot her about a tenth of a mile out.  I got to cheer her on and she was able to finish strong (before they closed down shop at the finish).

Last Points
Overall I thought the event was fantastic.  The organization was pretty good, the perks were really nice, and the course was beautiful.  I would recommend it for a girls' weekend/race.  Points of interest (good and bad) for those of you who might be interested in doing this in the future:

• There is a bra exchange around mile 6.5 (yes, you could swap your disgusting sweaty bra for a free new Nike one) which is one of the weirdest things I have seen as a race perk.
• The half marathon (probably two thirds or more of the field) split off around mile 12, but the marathon rejoins it around their mile 13 (marathon mile 16).  Marathoners got to run pretty much past the finish (marathon and half finish at the same spot) with the knowledge that we needed to run about 10 more miles.
• There is plenty of water/Nuun stations and a few Cliff Shot Blocks/Luna Bar stations.  I picked up Cliff Shot Blocks when available, but I was very glad to have carried my sports beans or I would not have had enough to eat.
• Even as a runner you have to pay for the shuttle bus to take you back to Union Square after the race.  I think $20 is a bit steep for runners to have to pay.  There may be a better alternative to get back to Union Square, but we didn't bother to figure it out.
• The NWM expotique (so fancy) is not the type of expo you would find at other races.  Do not expect there to be booths selling shoes, nutrition or other things a runner might be interested in buying at an expo.  There is one small tent selling Gu/fuel and a few other things like gloves or fuelbelts outside the main tent.  It was like the red-headed step-child of the expo and I think they only added it because people complained in the past.  Also, it was a very good idea for us to get our numbers on Friday.  Saturday we went to Niketown to get a shirt for my sister and there was an insane line for number pick-up.
• Either the live runner tracking is terrible or my sister's friends and I are not very bright.  We could not figure out how to track her (we wanted to know approximately where she was on the course) when we were looking for her at the end.
• There are a lot of men who run this race.  A lot.
• There was good crowd support, especially at the cheer stations and at the finish.  The best sign I saw was the one below which was when I was was heading up one of the hills between miles six and seven (a very good time to be getting  a laugh or two).

I love me some Ryan Gosling