A Walk to Remember

This morning, 20,000 of us lined us to run/walk the Nike Women's Marathon.

Out of all the 20,000 people, these are my favorite.

Regan and I started training a few months ago, but we both got injured. We decided instead of running, we would walk the 13.1 miles together. We had so much fun walking through the city. We took our sweet time walking, stopping, taking pictures and enjoying our beautiful city. It was 4 hours and 1 minute of pure bliss.

Nike goes all out. This is the largest women's half and full marathon in the world (I learned that this morning before the race started). Along the route they had lots of things to keep up entertained. For example, a Gospel choir. And who said we didn't go to church today?

The Maltese Falcon even stopped by.

Gotta love the Scottish men playing the bag pipes.

Hello cheerleaders! Go team Regan and Michelle!

The best entertainment was watching Audrey and Maggie run to us to give us big hugs of encouragement.

Thank you for the sign Juli!

This will be the last time I do this half marathon as a San Francisco resident. I really do love this city. Today, I think an additional 20,000 people love this city as well.

Regan and I love to do all sorts of things together, but the thing we do best is "gab". We couldn't pass up this "Gab like a girl" sign. Nike's marathon theme is "Like a Girl".

Regan and I picked up our girls from the sidelines and carried them the last .1 mile. It was so fun to cross the finish line with Audrey. She was obsessed with the Tiffany's necklace we got at the end (she thinks it's hers, so won't let me wear it, only her). I hope someday to do this half marathon with Audrey. Until then, I want to make it a yearly tradition with anyone who is interested. Tonight when I was putting Audrey to bed she wanted me to tell her the "finish line" story one more time.

Phewww, we finished. Barely even broke a sweat, but thank heavens for the Tiffany's necklace, Jamba juice and granola!

The best cheerleaders anyone could ask for.

Twiners.

Tiffanys is sponsor of the Nike Women's Marathon, and each year they design a necklace for those who do the race. This year the necklace has a picture of two girls running on it. I have seen the necklaces from the last three years and this was the only year that had two girls on it instead of just one. We like to think it was for us. But if it really was for us, the girls would have been walking...

I actually trained and ran the race in 2006. It was Dave's first quarter of dental school and he was crazy busy. I couldn't run one mile when I heard about the race and I decided I wanted to train and run it. It was a great experience to train and run it with Kelly.

Dear Kelly,
Remember when we would run to the bridge and back at 6 am and watch the sun rise? Remember how we would pick up Dave from school on Wed nights then go to Union Square and run while Dave watched Audrey? Remember the Coldstone ice cream we would get after we ran? That was a great race. I miss you Kelly.