Ferry Building 4miler

The big day finally arrived.....Irene's race!  Okay it was big for me for two reasons.  Firstly it was totally fab to be part of Irene training for the race and then, honestly, making it look so easy on the day and, secondly, I had peeps to run with, which was very cool (added bonus, Marcia joined us too, she has run that distance before.....tri-athlons no less.....).  All that aside 4 milers are not really my distance.  For the aficionados a four miler is this wild crazy, sick making (at least to me) sprint if you choose to run it like some mad crazy sick making thing......I do not.  Me, I'm an endurance girl who hates sprinting, being out of breath and feeling like I have to arrive someplace faster than my body is content to do!
Race started at 9am so we headed down the Fisherman's Wharf early.  It was a really fab morning, given it had rained endlessly the day before (and post race went on to rain endlessly Sunday.......just fyi, not raining today though!).
The registration crowd proved to be somewhat smaller than NY..well smaller than any race I've run in to date.  All up there were about 200 people running.  The majority veteran runners - all shapes, all sizes, all ages!
The race was along the Embacadero so given we had some time we did a little tourism....here's Marcia and I with the bay in the background.  It really did start out as a very spectacular day with the Bay very flat and calm.  In fact there were lots of crazy folk swimming.  These are the truly dedicated who seems to have an immunity to the cold.  Note I am also wearing my running vest.  Although the day was clear it wasn't exactly warm so I ran in my vest as well.  Shot on the right is Irene looking all sporty pre.race.
As we finally got underway best quote of the day goes to Irene just before they finished the countdown "Crap, so this thing is really happening then.....".  And so it did.  We started at the back of the pack and happily launched ourselves through Fisherman's Wharf and down to the Ferry Building.  It was a turnaround course so on the way back Irene chatted with some folk and we picked up a couple who assured us they were using us as their pacers!

Coming in at a very respectable time we each got handed a little purple ribbon which Irene proudly displayed (well geekily displayed) as we enjoyed our reward of a crab sandwich (in her case) and chowder bowl in mine and Marcias.  Although none of that to be enjoyed before Marcia (who clearly falls into the category as crazed....something we knew as she has participated in the Alcatraz swim on more than one occasion.....took a dip in the ocean (I did mention crazed didn't I?).
Given whole crab has become a personal favourite for me here AND we were in the tourism center of San Fran we also took the opportunity to do a little "window" shopping (Marcia holding some stylie crab eating implements).....nothing purchased but we did actually end up in this quite fab bakery/cafe/cookery shop that had lots of good stocking fillers!