Here are my thoughts about the good and the bad of the whole race experience.
Good
- Awesome location
- Tiffany & Co finisher medal (seriously, my two medals-DC and SF-are the ONLY race medals I wear daily)
- Nike race swag and SF half marathon gear for purchase
- Fantastic crowd support
- Smooth organization and race execution
Bad
- Lack of communication about key race details
- Nike deciding to not mail race packets only 2 weeks prior to the race
- Crazy long, unorganized finisher boutique lines
- Nike gear is $$
- $20 ticket for a shuttle back to the start
I'd love to hear about your experiences. The Nike FB page was full of very angry comments, which made for some highly interesting reading during our flight delay on the trip back home :)
We literally made the most out of every minute of our time in SF. After the race, we shuttled back to the start (and pretty much the front door of our hotel), we showered and headed out to lunch. The 49ers were playing, so the first place we attempted to go was full. We ended up at an Irish pub and the food was pretty good. BUT, my friend's credit card was overcharged $300...so BOO to that establishment and the fact that they won't respond to her to fix the issue.
Post lunch and fully refueled, we hopped on a cable car again and headed back down to the pier to bike the Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing like running a half marathon and biking a bridge in one day.
The ironic part was on the ride down to the pier, we discussed how the weather had been nice and the traditional SF fog was not an issue. We spoke a little too soon. The bridge adventure was a little drizzly and definitely foggy. But gorgeous nonetheless.
We rented bikes and followed the bike path (which wasn't as easy as the dude made it seem, although maybe our exhaustion hindered our critical thinking skills). The path had one big hill and was a bit much for us and we walked our bikes some. There was no actual bike path at this part and we were nervous nellies about it! It also was getting dark, to be fair.
We sped back to try and return our bikes before the place closed, but we didn't make it, so we had to go a little further to their larger store and make the drop there. We ended the night with some souvenir shopping and yummy Mexican dinner.
That pretty much sums up our whirlwind trip. Checkout was super early for us (5am-ish) and we hit the Bart and headed back to the airport. Thankfully the only travel delay we experienced was the last leg of our trip. Our final flight was 3 hours delayed and we didn't get back to our homes until 3am. Totally.worth.it.
