Kaiser Half 2010

Me, Vanessa, Julie, Megan

The girls and I did the Kaiser Half Marathon for the second year in a row this past Sunday. It is always held on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday. Perfect - we get our 1300 calorie burn out of the way by 11am and are ready for and well-deserving of the afternoon food coma!

We did things a little differently this year and only got to the race 1/2 an hour early. (This is Alyssa, Julie and Vanessa last year when we arrived pre-dawn.) While we definitely missed Alyssa out on the course this year, we did not follow her 6:50 am departure time! Sadly we are getting to be old ladies and despite not arriving at the crack of dawn, we all chose to crash after the race instead of heading out for the Super Bowl. Oh well - I thoroughly enjoyed watching it from my couch and alternating between napping and eating my much-anticipated burrito.

The half is a beautiful course that starts in Golden Gate Park, heads up and around the Panhandle, back through the park, out onto the Great Highway, and then back into the park to finish.

I can't finish this post without bragging about what awesome women I am friends with. Vanessa is my new running hero - she ran the coveted sub-2 hour half-marathon on Saturday. Not only did she break 2 hours for the first time, she killed it with 1:56:12!! And Julie cut 11 minutes off her time from last year - that's pretty

much an extra mile's worth of time! Kathy completed the 5k for the second year and, deciding 3 miles just wasn't enough, walked home from the park to make it an even 10 (this is another sign that she absolutely has it to join us next year for the half!).

I didn't break any records at this race (2:08:44 - definitely happy to keep breaking 10 min miles, but 1:30 slower than last year). However, I was the big winner of the day with the lowest bib number - 133 out of 10,000! Maybe this makes me the big loser?