Last Race of the Year

The day dawned cold and clear. Time to head out to Tiburon to catch the ferry to Angel Island and run 12 K. It seemed like such a good idea at the time of sign-up - visit a place we hadn't been before, run as a couple for the first time, run on a trail instead of the pavement. As soon as we left home, I remembered all the things I had forgotten to bring: a hat or a cap, my sunglasses, my wristwatch, sunblock. Bah! Who needs these things? We remembered water and the kids so on we went.

On the way up 880, we ran into not one, not two, but THREE accidents involving a total of six cars. Omen or not? Good thing we had built a cushion into our travel time. We dropped the kids off at my cousin's house, met up with our running friends and caught the ferry. Goals #1, 2, and 3 accomplished. Now all that remained was the run.

Thank goodness we didn't have a really good idea of what the race course was going to be like otherwise I don't think I would have started running in the first place. After a nice flat warm up jog around the picnic area, we started to head uphill. And kept running uphill on switchback, after switchback, after switchback. I kid you not, there must have been at least 10 of these bloody things and every time I looked up all I could see was a stream of runners about 20 or 30 feet above me, running uphill. But, and here's the big but, I didn't feel like I needed to stop running. Once again, I have the Dish to thank because none of the inclines were nearly as steep and evil as the ones on my training runs. M and I had decided early on that we were going to run together the whole way so we just egged each other on, encouraging, pushing. It was a good thing.

The path leveled out and we got an absolutely stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco in the distance - for about 5 seconds. We ran on, not wanting to lose momentum. The trail wound through trees, up and down and around. The ground was moist but not muddy from Tuesday and Thursday's rains. Nice and cushy on the feet. There was a slight breeze and in the sun it felt like it was almost 60 degrees. Not bad for the eighth of December.

We kept track of the distance by time. M would call out "We're starting on our nth minute now, should be about 3/4/whatever miles." At around 60 minutes in, we figured there were about 2 miles or so left and we started heading downhill. The trail looked strangely familiar. Hang on a second, this was what we came up on.

WE RAN UP THIS THING???? No way.

Way.

I felt like I was flying down the last mile. It was awesome. Long strides, I had lots of wind and my legs felt really good. My knees did complain a bit but that faded quickly as we crossed the finish line at exactly the same time. Hooray! We did it!

What a great way to end the 2007 race season. Four events, four shirts, no injuries and many, many wonderful memories.

Time to start planning 2008.