Fitness Swellness: The Nike San Francisco Women’s Marathon is in FIVE days!

Holy moly — have I even posted that I’m running the Nike San Francisco Marathon (my fourth full marathon)? And it’s in FIVE days. It’s possible that I haven’t yet posted it on the blog (and just on Twitter and Instagram) because between marathon training and traveling and working, half the time I don’t even know what city I’m in, it’s just run, eat, work, run, get on a flight, repeat.

I ran the Nike Women’s San Fran half in 2011. Training for this marathon has gone pretty well, no pinkeye or long-lasting colds derailed my training too much as it has for other marathons I’ve trained for, so I am so READY.

To help me get prepped for the race, Josh, a Nike product expert, assessed my gait several weeks ago, and as I’m fairly neutral in my foot strike and I prefer more support in my shoes (I like my Nike Free, but for my shorter runs of 10k or so mostly), he recommended the Nike Vomero 8 (above). I’ve been training in them for weeks and they’re super comfortable on me, and there’s the added bonus of the fantastic colourway 🙂

Next, a full wardrobe of running gear — I might not win the race (well, not “might not”, I definitely will not win the race!) but I’ll surely be a top contender for best dressed.

Check out that wicked down-filled vest — what looks like stylish eyelet-like detailing is actually the Nike Aeroloft baffle and ventilation system — the laser perforations combined with the welded baffle construction makes the vest lightweight while also allowing your body to disperse excess heat. Plus, it packs neatly into itself in a pouch in the back of it. It’ll be perfect to put on after I cross the finish line so I don’t shiver once I stop running. Oh, and my two tops (the pink tank and the teal half-zip) are both Dryknit; totally in love with how lightweight and soft Dryknit is.

Oh, and while certainly not what I’ll be running in, but just right for a bit of sightseeing in San Francisco are these fly Nike Dunk Sky Hi Premium. Love.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter (@healthswellness) to stay up to date on my race progress and adventures in San Fran!

3 Comments October 15, 2013

Nike Women’s Half-Marathon, October 16, 2011

At the race start in Union Square

So I’m pretty smiley in this pre-race photo – especially considering I’m crazy anxious about the 21.1k I’m about to run in the Nike Women’s Half-marathon.

And I wish I could say the race went off without a hitch, but lots went wrong — setbacks that would normally frazzle me during a race:

• Bag check took a long time – meaning I started the race very late (18 minutes into the race), meaning I had to work through the crowds more than if I’d started in my proper corral
• One of my shoelaces untied, which has never happened to me before in a race, the precious seconds I lost retying, eek!
• I accidentally paused my interval timer on my watch without realizing it, which completely threw off my intervals for walk breaks (and even more important, I use the walk interval as a reminder to hydrate so my hydratio was off as well)
• The music on my iPhone would stop playing occasionally, ack!
• I only know kilometres, and the pace bunny signs were in miles, so I just felt confused overall.

And yet so many things were great about this race that they outweigh these things, such as:

• Hello? Tiffany & Co. medals??? Sweet.

• Firemen in tuxes presenting you these Tiffany medals? Even sweeter.

• Running my own race, essentially taking it easy and comfortably is much less stressful than my usual race experience.
• I finished in 2 hours and 8 minutes — which is much longer than my spring half-marathons, but not too shabby considering I didn’t really trained for the race. I can just decide to run a half now it seems and have a level of fitness that’ll get me through it. Wowzers.
• The incredible energy of being surrounded by 20,000+ fearless women running the race, the largest women’s race in the world

For more on how my race went, check out my post on thekit.ca!

2 Comments October 24, 2011