San Francisco Trip Recap, Saturday 10/21/2006, Part 2

Here we are in front of Niketown. You can see a crowd of people gathered there on the sidewalk. On the wall of Niketown, all the names of the marathon participants were listed and people were posing in front and having other people take pictures of them pointing to their name. It was a little crazy.


Here's another picture of us from a different angle so you can see the big billboard that Nike put up on the top of the store:


Here's a picture of us in front of Niketown from later in the day when it was less hectic:


And here's a picture of my name on the wall. (Look in the middle.)


Inside, Niketown was just as loud and crazy as the day before but it was easier to navigate without children. I bought a marathon shirt and discovered that the heat press station was a place where you could think up a phrase (15 characters or less) and the Nike people would print it on your shirt for free. That sounded like fun but I couldn't think of anything so I took my purchase and went back to the hotel room to drop it off.

I then met Maura (the Team In Training Campaign Director from Syracuse), Harland (our coach), Linda, Ellen and Alicia (three participants from the Syracuse area that I hadn't met before) and we all walked to the Moscone Center for the Pasta Party. The Pasta Party is a Team In Training pre-raceday event where you gather with hundreds (thousands?) of other participants to share a meal (of pasta plus more), listen to some encouraging words, and hear the story of someone who has suffered from a blood cancer.

Our sitting (there were two more after ours) was at 12:15. Lunch was good--dark green salad, three different kinds of pasta, whole-wheat rolls, and fruit--and our group was seated near the front of the huge room so we had a good view of the speakers. Someone from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society spoke first, then Joan Benoit Samuelson (the Nike Women's Marathon began as a way to honor Joan Benoit Samuelson, the first American women to win an Olympic medal in the marathon), and then a man from Texas and his two children.

What started out as an encouraging story--the man's wife was diagnosed with cancer, was aggressively treated, he joined Team In Training, she went into remission, they planned their family trip to San Francisco--took an incredibly sad turn when he went on to say that his wife, at only 28 years old, had had a relapse and had died just six weeks earlier.

To see the struggles his wife had endured and to see him stand up there with his two young children, after all he had been through and was still going through, and have a sense of humor and encourage the rest of us to have a good race the next day was really an inspiration. It definitely put the whole race in perspective and made the idea of running 26.2 miles much less daunting than it had been a few hours before.

After the pasta party, I met Braman and the kids in Yerba Buena Gardens. By then, Nora was asleep in the stroller so we walked around a little more, had tea and treats at Citizen Cupcake (I had a delicious lemon cupcake filled with lemon curd, topped with lemon frosting and decorated with a meringue straw), then checked out another store on my paper list, Stacey's. I bought a few more cards (including one with cherry tomatoes, Nora's favorite) and Larsson picked out two new books.

Since Friday had taken such a toll on my feet, I had planned to spend as much of Saturday sitting down as I could. But San Francisco is such a fun city and we weren't there for very long so it was just too tempting to walk around and see as much as we could. My left foot was really sore, though, and numb after the day's activities so I iced it a few times that night after we got back to the hotel room and made sure to take Naproxen and Tylenol.

I was starting to get worried about the marathon so I did as much preparing before bed as I could. I set the alarm clock for 4:45am, pinned my number on my shirt, folded my shirt, shorts, and socks and put them in a pile with my hat, iPod, BodyGlide, GU, the transportation wristband I'd need for the shuttle from the finish line back to Union Square, and the Naproxen and Tylenol I would need for the next day.

I knew I'd need to eat breakfast, hopefully oatmeal, the next day so we confirmed that the Lori's Diner on Mason Street was open 24 hours and served oatmeal. I felt like there wasn't anything left to do so I tried to relax and get some sleep before the big day.