Nike Women's Marathon 08: Friday

Nothing like getting up at the crack of 4am to head to the airport starts a day better. Oy vey. Sixty some odd of us Team in Training Desert Mountains Chapter boarded a plane for beautiful San Francisco Friday morning at 6:30am. We arrived in the city to sunny and clear skies and a forecast of the same for the next 3 days. A balmy 86 degrees welcomed us to downtown. Luz and I checked into the hotel and headed out to have lunch, pick up our race packets and experience the Expotique at Union Square. As we walked towards the excitement we stopped for lunch at the Toaster Oven sandwich shop. (I should have known something was amiss, when I couldn't finish lunch.) We picked up our bibs and all kinds of swag. We even partook in the chair/foot massages from Kaiser Permanente, gate analysis by Lady Footlocker & Nike, personalized buttons, and smoothies rom Jamba Juice. After a couple hours we crossed the street to experience Niketown.


Niketown is four floors of Nike merchandise. The second floor is dedicated to the marathon paraphenalia. We found our names on the wall outside. All the runners participating in the marathon have their names on the windows covering the first floor outside.


We made our way through the crowds and bought our goodies. Around 2pm we made our way back to the hotel for a respite. I crashed. Luz crashed.

Luz was fortunate to have some old, dear friends come to the city for the evening. She joined them for dinner, while I was left to my own devices. I woke up sometime around 6p, freezing cold in a room of 77.5 degrees. "Uh-oh, that's not good." I could not get warm. I needed to get water and something in my stomach. Soup? Mashed potatoes? Something to deal with this fever. I perused the room service menu. My soup options were French Onion (No Way! Beef stock, yuck!) or Clam Chowder (OMG! Rich, creamy clams, not going to stay down. I "urped" at the thought of it.) "OK, I saw a soup shack down the street earlier. The restaurants along our street touted soups." I needed to go into the wild world alone to forage for soup, bottled water and cold medicine. As I was walking through the lobby I ran into our coach, Roland. He asked if I wanted to join a group heading to Little Italy for dinner. They were walking. I knew it was just up the street from Niketown on the other side of Chinatown. Sure, I'd be with people. We made it to The Stinking Rose a couple miles away.

It was a garlic extravaganza. More garlic than you can imagine. Garlic at the table waiting for us. Our eyes burned from the fine aroma of garlic wafting out and inside. They even made garlic ice-cream. It was a group effort to choke it down. It started with 7 of us and ended with 9 team members, coaches, mentors, and admin. We had the most amazing waiter with 47 years of experience. He was a hoot! Ray, the waiter is 75 years old and had the fortune to carry the Olympic torch through SFO for the last Winter Olympics. Amazing!

After a few hours of ingesting Mother Earth's most powerful cold remedy (I had the mashed potatoes and some bread, again I could not finish.) we strolled back to the hotel via the financial district.

Across the street from the hotel was a bottle shop, that sold water. I loaded my arms and returned to my room. I climbed into bed with a fist full of ibuprofen, water, Emergen-C and hot tea. I curled up with some Boston Legal and hoped for the best. Good night nurse.