2012 Nike Women's Half Marathon Recap

The Race
To run the Nike Women's Marathon you either need to win the lottery or join a charity group. I didn't do either. I got lucky! On January 8th, I ran the Nike+ Virtual Half Marathon with Team Victorius. A few week later, Nike made this announcement:

"Thousands of women came together as one this past weekend for the Nike+ Women's Half Marathon. Over 75 teams were formed, and one came out ... VICTORIUS. Over 1000 women joined this team, and for that they'll be rewarded! Welcome to NWM SF 2012. That's right. NO lottery"

No lottery! Yahoooo! Fast forward 9 months.

Saturday, October 13th 

We left San Diego at 6:20am and arrived in San Francisco at 8:00am. From the airport, we took the BART train which left us in Powell Street, a few blocks from our hotel. We were also very close to Union Square where the Expotique was held. We left our luggage at the hotel and ran to the expo to pick up our race packets.

My first impression of the Expotique was "wow, it's small". My second impression was "wow, this is totally different".  They had very few vendors but very unique ones including Safeway, Neutrogena, Yurbuds, Paul Mitchell, Luna and Zico. They had a Nike Women's Bra Bar and a Cold Weather Boutique. They offered 15-min free hair styling sessions too. I was surprised to see so many women were waiting in line to get their hair done, especially the day before a BIG race. From a marketing perspective, I understand the concept. Nike wants all women to feel pampered from head to toe. From a running perspective, I am not sure.

Nike Women's Marathon's Beautique

We walked around looking for the official 2012 NWM merchandise, but we couldn't find any. Later on, we realized that this was available across the street at Niketown.

The Niketown wall shows the name of every participating in the race

25,000 runners. We found our names!

Niketown was a big party. They turned the entire store into a nightclub, DJs included.

Tiffany colored Nike shoes, available exclusively at Niketown

After the expo, we headed to my favorite chuch vegan restaurant in the city, Gracias Madre, located on Mission Street.

From there, we took a taxi cab to Ghirardelli's square to continue the pre-race carb-loading at San Francisco's finest ice cream & chocolaterie. Yum!

Sunday, October 14th - Race Day

We woke up at 5:15am and met some friends from the Embrace The Crazy running group in the hotel lobby. We had a small breakfast ( bananas with almond butter and coconut water). We took a couple of group pictures and walked to Union Square, just a few blocks away. We had over an hour to kill before race started. No problem. Time to take more pictures and videos.

From San Francisco with Love.

Here I am practicing Japanese while May is working on her Spanish :)



We headed to our corral around 6:30am. We were a large crowd. 25,000 runners, most of them women.

This is what we call in Spanish "marcha" or "party time".




At 7:00am the gun went off. We were in the second corral, it took us just a minute or less to cross the starting line. It was very crowded and I couldn't pace myself too well. The first mile was a nice downhill sprint. As we were passing the Embarcadero, running along the Piers, I kept thinking that just 24 hours before we walked the same route on reverse (from Ghirardelli's Square to Union Square) but it took us 2 hours. Soon we arrived at the Fisherman's Warf and the first two hills of the course around Ghirardeli's Square.

My friend May and I were running side by side but we lost each other around mile 3.  Then I saw this guy holding a funny poster.  Just in case you haven't heard, the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee, Paul Ryan, claimed in a radio interview to have run a sub-3 marathon when his finishing time was actually 04:01:25. Hmmm, I don't know of any marathon runner that don't know their PR or at least an approximation. Want to know what's your real PR according to PR?  Check this out.

Ok, back to the subject. There were hills at mile 6, 7... I stopped counting after mile 8. My goal this time around was to finish the race without walking the hills. I didn't care about timing. After all, I had ran a full marathon the weekend before. This was just another training run to my road to Valencia Marathon.

Going UP, UP, UP. 

I was looking forward to the amazing views of the Golden Gate Bridge from Chrissy Field, but the bridge was nowhere to be found. It was too foggy. The temperatures were on the cooler side. I thought of my friend Tessa with whom I ran the RnR Edinburgh, a very hilly and cold race.

I spent half of the race thinking "OMG, here it comes another hill" and "Come on, we are in San Francisco. What do you expect?". While my mind was busy with this internal debate, I soon realized that we were at mile 11. This is where the half marathoners and full marathoners split. Only 2 miles to go!  I decided then to not look at the watch again and give it my 100%. The last 2 miles were all downhill. Perfect ending!  I crossed the finished line in 2:12:30 feeling strong. Again, not bad considering I just ran the Long Beach Full Marathon 7 days before.

Few minutes later, I saw my friend May in the crowd. Good timing! We walked around, took some pictures and indulged in post-race snacks. There was a lot to choose from, including the most delicious lavender tea I have ever tried, courtesy of a company called  David's Tea.

All finishers received a Tiffany necklace handed out by a San Francisco firefighter wearing a tux. What else can you ask for?

The finisher's race reward.

After the race, we took the bus shuttle back to Union Square. We had 6 hours to spare until our flight departure. We decided to get foot massages and eat authentic Vietnamese Food. Gotta love San Francisco!