I'm not sure where to even begin, so I guess I will start with day one of the trip.
Last Friday the 12th, Adam, Jeree, Ashton and I made our way to the Des Moines airport. We were up at 3:30am and at the airport by 4:45am. EARLY DAY! But for some reason I have no problem waking up early for anything other than work lol.
We met up with the rest of the team in training group (28 members total on the Iowa team heading out to the NWM!) and boarded the plane.
We arrived in San Francisco by 10:30 and had the whole day ahead of us!
We stayed at the Sir Francis Drake in Union Square. The NWM expo, Niketown, and the start for the race were all within a block of our hotel!
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| Lobby of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. A ton of team in training people from all over the country stayed here :) |
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| Lefty's, where we ate lunch, famous for a guy from Iowa stealing the left arm and traveling around taking photos with it in Iowa. He felt guilty and returned the arm with all of the photos. |
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| Outside the Expo with some of our teammates |
The audio tour was pretty good and the boat ride was nice because of the views :) Lots of walking though! Our feet were killing us and we were a bit worried we wouldn't be able to walk by race day lol.
On the boat ride and during the tour we were all deliriously tired from our long day of traveling. We couldn't stop laughing and taking pictures. At one point Ash mis-read the business card from a cute bike taxi driver, and we all laughed so hard we cried. It was a really fun day :) That night we met some of the teammates and had a few drinks and delicious dinner. It was a great way to cap off our first day in San Fran!
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| Windy... |
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| Alcatraz |
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| Nerds listening to our audio tour |
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| bike taxi |
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| Crying laughing for virtually no reason :) So fun |
Saturday we decided to get up and loosen up our legs by going for a short jog. We went a mile and a half down to fisherman's warf and had a gorgeous view of the oakland bridge and the bay (little did we know this apparently was a rare morning where fog didn't engulf the bay, every other morning we couldn't see a thing!) We took tons of pictures, and it felt great to start our day off with a jog down to the bay and back. It definitely made us want to live there!
Next we watched the Hawks while we got ready for the inspirational luncheon. It was an awesome get together. The speakers were great. One was a girl about my age talking about her battle with Leukemia and all that she has gone through in the past few years. It was a really inspirational event and reminded us all why we were there and what an awesome organization LLS is! I don't think there was a dry eye in the place during her speech. They also recognized the top fundraiser in the country, who happened to be a woman on our Iowa team! She raised over $45,000 for LLS! Unreal!
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| Team in Training members from all over the country flooding into the luncheon! |
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| Carb Overload! They only served pasta! :) |
After this, you guessed it, we went shopping! We couldn't help ourselves! I limited myself to some Nike gear with NWM on it, and a few other items. We all tried to not go overboard for the simple reason that we all only packed a carry-on!! I don't know how I did it, but I am vowing to never check a bag again! :)
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| At Niketown they put all of the race participant's names on the wall! :) |
By dinner time we were exhausted and decided to carb up with some pasta and get to bed early :) The race started at 7:00am Sunday.
Race day was finally here! We met the rest of the team in the lobby at 6:15am, took some pictures, and we were off to our corrals. The streets were flooded with people and it was such and exciting feeling of anticipation!
The actual race was such an awesome experience that I'm not sure I can even put it into words! Jeree and I decided to try running together. We never run with other people, but after hearing others say how awesome it is to cross the finish line with a friend, we decided to give it a shot. :) Ash is too fast for us to even consider the 3 of us running together lol. She rocked it!
The race started right outside our hotel in Union Square. We ran down to fisherman's warf and then all along the bay. It was very overcast, foggy, and 50 degrees. It was perfect race weather. At some points it was even misting :) The only downfall was the fog, we couldn't see any gorgeous views like the Golden Gate Bridge. We knew we were running along the bay and the bridge, but it was so foggy we couldn't see a thing!
Jeree and I had a plan to run the whole thing and at the water stations we would walk through them, then if one of us was struggling we'd know we had that to look forward to about every 2 miles.
Miles 1-6 were a breeze and we held a good pace around 10-11 minutes. The streets are very narrow there and were crowded with all the people, so it was a bit hard to get going because we were always having to weave around people.
We had looked at the elevation map before the race and knew that there was a huge hill for an entire mile from mile 6-7. They weren't kidding about huge hill... this was a hill like I've never ran before, AND it last for an entire mile! So, you guessed it, a little ways into the hill, and after realizing the people walking were going about the same speed as the runners, we decided to walk. We had heard that it's sometimes better to walk the hill and then pass people on the way down, so we decided to try that. By the top of the hill we were completely rejuvenated and ready to sprint. We took off down the hill and were having a blast and feeling completely re-energized! :) Mile 8-9 was basically the same as 6-7. Huge, steep, long hill! So we did the same thing. Once we were to 9.5 miles a wave of emotion came over me. I realized I was actually going to finish this thing I'd been training for for months and working so hard at raising money for! I couldn't believe it was coming to an end. At around mile 11 we knew we were going to finish in right around our goal of 2.5 hours, Jeree's foot hurt and my hip was hurting a little, so we started to do a run/walk routine and tried to enjoy the last two miles. We even stopped for a beer someone handed us lol.
The entire race was such an amazing experience because of LLS TNT. The entire route people were cheering and most of them were cheering for TNT runners. They saw our jerseys and specifically cheered "GO TEAM IOWA!" It was so awesome to be a part a huge group of people working towards the same goal and for the same cause!
We sprinted the last half mile or so and crossed the finish line hand in hand! A firemen handed us our Tiffany necklaces and we felt such an awesome feeling of accomplishment!
It was funny how I hardly noticed any pain during the entire race, but moments after crossing the finish, EVERYTHING HURT! lol... It's pretty amazing the things your body and mind can do!
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| I dedicated my race to people who have or had cancer and other diseases |
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| Jeree is one of those awesome cancer survivors. She rocks! |
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| Thank you to all of my supporters!!!! Never could have done it without you! |
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| Some of the Iowa team |
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| Pre-race with our new friend and teammate Wendy :) |
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| One of only a few pics during the race, you get the idea of how crowded and foggy it was! |
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| Feeling awesome with only 4 miles left!!! |
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| Yes please! |
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| Gonna wear that every day! |
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| We were frozen but had to have a post-race beach pic! |
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| Showing off our new bling |
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| Awesome finisher's shirts :) |
After the race we were absolutely frozen so we didn't stick around long. We found our bus and went back to the hotel. I've never wanted or needed a hot shower more in my entire life lol. After our showers we laid around all afternoon. That evening we headed down to fisherman's warf for dinner and drinks with Adam and his friends and family. We had a great time but we were just too exhausted and decided to call it a night fairly early. We also knew we had a long day in wine country the next morning! :)
For our last day in San Fran we had booked a private limo wine tour in napa!!!! We couldn't have been more excited! Adam had a friend in California who joined us with his friend Katie. The 7 of us got picked up at the hotel at 9:30am and we were off to Napa :) The tasting fees were included in the original price, so that was awesome! I'd never been wine tasting before and now I'm officially ruined. I now know what good wine tastes like and I LOVE IT! At the first winery we tasted 4 wines and then she asked us if we'd like to "revisit" any of them... Of course the answer was yes! And now that we knew the lingo, "revisit" was our new favorite term lol. I mean, what's better then a fancy way of saying, "please give me more of that really expensive wine for free!" lol
The second winery, Cornerstone, was by far our favorite. They treated us amazing, were very knowledgable, and on top of the 6 we tasted, they let us "revisit" plenty more :) They even posted a picture of us on their facebook page. We were all having a lot of fun. The last winery was a very nice place, but we felt rushed at the tasting... but the lady did manage to get a stain out of Ashton's sweater, so they get bonus points for that.
We had an absolute blast all day laughing and riding through wine country. I officially love napa and would recommend it to anyone. We all had such a great time!
We got back to the city and went to the top floor hotel bars in our hotel and the one next to ours to take in the great view. We met Stewart, dentist to the stars, and he was nice enough to buy our drinks and chat with us about the city and the best places to go :)
We capped off the night with some dancing and then headed to bed.
We hit up Niketown one last time in the morning to get some finishers gear and then it was time to head back to Iowa :(
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| We wanted to "revisit" that cheese and meat too! yummmmm |
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| Cornerstone! Our favorite! |
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| Those 3 were my favorite wines. Love cabs if you couldn't tell by my purple mouth |
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| no stain! |
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| Gare Bear our lovely driver! |
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| our new pal stewart |
So, I'd have to say that I had one of the best vacations EVER! I highly suggest doing a race for charity as a group! Also, I believe going on a vacation to do a race or event is one of the best ways to vacation. It adds so much to the experience of normal vacationing.
I am hooked to TNT and will definitely do more races! Thank you everyone who supported me throughout my training and fundraising!
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