For Erik’s birthday, I planned a surprise trip to San Francisco with a handful of running friends. After doing some research, it turns out that there are very few running races in downtown San Francisco during Labor Day weekend. That seems like a massive oversight, in my opinion! There happened to be two races, both run by the same group, that fell squarely on his birthday. Our two options were a 5K and a 50K. Yeah, that is a pretty big gap.
We were in the middle of moving to our new home. I tried to pack for the trip a few weeks in advance without raising any red flags. Packing requirements are vastly different between a 5K and 50K, but since the 50K was a loop around a track, I wasn’t too concerned about needing to carry things during the run.
The night before the race, we headed over to a nice little Italian restaurant to carb load for either a 5K or 50K. We were all still unsure what distance we would do, but he was surprised with the options. Of course it was after we polished off a fair amount of pizza and pasta that we’d decide to do the 5K. Our mutual friend partially spilled the beans about the races.
The next morning, we drove over to Golden Gate Park from San Mateo for a jaunt around town. This was my first real run since I had torn my ankle over the summer during the last race (Slacker Half Marathon). One of my friends stayed with me during the run. The course itself was very flat. It was mostly sidewalks, but every once in awhile there was a flat dirt trail or grass. It had a small-race feel, with the manual tallying of laps for the 50K and the awarding of ribbons for the shorter distance. I wish we had something like this in the Denver/Aurora area. It actually kind of inspires me to do something like this to make some friends in the neighborhood, but another project like this might be too much for me to take on right now. 🙂
The weather was perfect, and running with friends is always a guaranteed good time. I hope to come back for the 50K another year!
Amara in Training 