Fall in Manassas

Fall in Manassas, at my parents' house. This is one of the views of my front yard.

Mr. Loungy

We went to visit the famous stinky sea lions and J and I nicknamed this guy Mr. Loungy. J refers to him in his blog in this post.

T

We were able to slowly tour around San Fran a bit after the race.

M and the team

Me and my support team just after the race. The boys were so helpful and the best spectators anyone could hope for. This is one of my favorite photos ever. Somewhere, there's a gerat photo of me back at the hotel after the race. I am sprawled out on the bed with a gallon of water and a bag of pretzels. The best thing was - the Red Sox were playing the Yankees in that big "upset" ALCS that led them to the World Series so we spent the next night or two chilling and watching baseball games.

Finish

We finished the race together, and it was one of the best moments of my life. I had never felt so happy.

Mile 21

Somewhere around mile 20, I made friends with this woman named Jen who I had never met before. She was looking rough so we started talking. We ran the rest of the entire marathon together and it was SO extremely helpful! I remember as we passed by J and T at this checkpoint, the last before the finish, I yelled out "This is my new best friend Jen!"

Mile 19

This is somewhere around mile 19. I was still smiling and waving, which is pretty good!

Mile 17

Here I am at Mile 17. This was the third time during the course that I could see J and T. I had just come through a very difficult section from 14-15 in the Presidio in San Fran.

Mile 7

This was the first time that I saw J and T on the race course, around Mile 7. I am looking pretty good right here - running fast and smiling!

Early morning

These were taken, probably between 4:30 and 5:00 AM as I did my early morning dress, prep, and breakfast before catching the bus to the starting line. The bus left around 5 AM and I wouldn't see J and T until about an hour into the race.

Nike Marathon

All this time, in 2004, I had been training secretly to run the inaugural Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco. I say "secretly" because I only told J and my friend T that I was doing it. I literally didn't tell a soul I was planning this because I didn't want to have to tell a bunch of people if I couldn't hack the training or I didn't finish the race. I didn't tell my own parents until about 2 or 3 weeks AFTER the race when my mom asked me why I had been out of town that weekend. The toughest month of training took place while J was in Australia too so he didn't get the joy of seeing me after my first 18 mile training run (but he also wasn't around to complain that I spent every weekend either running for 4 hours or recovering from running for four hours).

The three of us, Me, J, and T flew out to San Fran for the big weekend! T was a veteran of the NY Marathon so I knew he'd be excellent moral support.

Dog

Photo of the day.