1) Wake up in time to leave for 8:30am in order to walk 1.6 miles for 9:10am ferry to San Francisco (I'm staying in Alameda).
1.5) Pick up a water en route to take on my run.
2) Run by the water in San Francisco. Run 6 miles in one direction, then turn around and return.
3) Eat well-earned dim sum in Chinatown.
Oh wow, did things ever not happen that way.
Surprise #1: I checked the weather and it was 56F out. That is an absolutely fantastic temperature for running, but I was concerned that it might not be as nice on a ferry. So I wanted to take a sweater, but could not find a good way of doing this. I chose a cotton t-shirt and then took my sweater with me, wearing it fashionably wrapped around my waist while running. Really. It's a wool sweater. Not a very good real runner look.
The next surprise occurred when I started walking toward the ferry. I opted for a leisurely walk pace, leaving what I thought was plenty of time to get from my hotel to the ferry stop. I grew quite confused when it was 8:55am and I still had a mile to go. Turns out that the actual distance was not 1.6 miles -- that was just one part of the walk. The actual distance was 2.2 miles. I didn't make it for the 9:10am ferry. And trust me, this place is in the middle of nowhere, Alameda. There weren't even any places on the way to get a water.
Fortunately for me, it is Fleet Week in San Francisco. Or, as you will soon learn, unfortunately for me, it is Fleet Week in San Francisco. The good part of Fleet Week is that there are more ferries. The bad news is that everyone and his/her brother goes to San Francisco for Fleet Week, particularly today since there was also the air show. So more ferries, but more ferries because of many, many more people. However, I did not have to wait an hour, so that's good.
By the time I actually got to SF, I was pretty much itching to get running. I thought that, as per the original plan, I would be there by around 9:30am, but because the ferry did Alameda - Oakland - SF (instead of the normal route Oakland - Alameda - SF), I didn't actually get there until closer to 11. I just started running, going past Fisherman's Wharf and heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge. By the way, there were people, but apparently runners near Fisherman's Wharf act like they own the place and run on the road. It's pretty fun actually.
And so I headed toward the Golden Gate Bride, noticing that there were large people amassing near the shore in preparation for the airshow. Not good. I also noticed, around Fort Mason, that there was a hefty hill:
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| Legit hill. |
I was hoping that this would be one of the few hills and I was correct. So that was a nice surprise.
Around 3.8 miles, I had reached the Warming Hut near the Golden Gate Bridge:
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| Incidentally, none of these pictures is mine. I didn't bring my camera. |
I looked around for water fountain, didn't find one, and decided the time had come to stop and get a water. There was a line (because people were amassing!), but I felt that it was worth stopping for a few minutes to prevent something very bad from happening. I then drank about half of it over the next 5 minutes. Definitely I could have developed a better game plan. Why I did not just bring my water bottle from home, I have no idea.
I ran toward the Golden Gate Bridge, when I learned something interesting: you can't keep running in that direction beyond that point. It's closed due to security issues. So I had reached only around 4 miles, and had to turn around. This was not a good sign because I had really wanted to go the straight 6, then turn back. While I was running, I got thinking about one of my favorite books from when I was younger, Anastasia On Her Own by Lois Lowry. The basic premise is that the protagonist, Anastasia Krupnik, is apparently a nascent control freak who wants to 'help' her mother organize her life. She makes up these extensive lists to sort out the various chores that need to be done around the house. Then her mother is called away to California, so Anastasia actually gets left in charge. At this point, she realizes that the housekeeping schedule requires the addition of Unexpected Events, since there are unpredictable interruptions that take her off schedule. I love this Unexpected Events idea. That's basically how I felt about my whole damn run today.
The major flaw in my plan was that more and more people were in San Francisco as the air show was about to begin and I was heading right into this whole mess. I tried to add on some distance by looping around places, such as near Crissy Field and the Marina District, but it still wasn't enough to make up the extra 4 miles that needed to be added. As a result, I wound up in lots of crowds (boo), stopped at lights (double boo), and overall irritated with much of the run. To give you a sense of just how irritating this got, at the 11.9 mile mark, I ran into a crowd of people and almost had to walk. That is not the time you want to walk. Instead, I hung a left and ran around the outside landscaped section of one of the buildings (I know this sounds weird, but I can't think of a better way of describing it). Also, apparently I looked at my phone right when I started 11.9 because I can't think of another 0.1 of a mile that felt like it took so long. Did I mention that my phone kept going into camera mode and ate a whole bunch of its battery?
It is worth noting that despite all of this, I still didn't give up. And that was a good thing! Even though it was by no means an ideal run. I don't even know what the time was because everything was messed up from all of that starting and stopping.
Also, I had to run the Fort Mason hill again, but I noticed something. In a way, the hill was great because it distracted me from anything else happening. All I was thinking about was getting up the hill and finishing it, then keeping form while running back down. This kind of focus was exactly what was needed right around the 9 mile mark.
A less nice surprise was the fact that because I started late, and because I was still running late, I wound up with a pretty decent sunburn on the bottom half of my face and neck. Classy!
After all of this, I decided that it wasn't worth going to Chinatown since it would be crowded and it was far away (comparatively). Instead, I opted to find a place to eat near Fisherman's Wharf. I wanted to go to Boudin and have a chowder in a sourdough bowl:
However, I couldn't because they would not let me use my credit card without showing an ID. Of course, I had no ID because I had only taken the basic necessities (by which I mean a credit card and my hotel key card). The manager would not give me an exception. My reaction is likely best described as Massachusetts. But come on: you've just run 12 irritating miles, you haven't eaten in almost 6 hours apart from the Mini ClifBar you had on your run, and some guy is not letting you get a chowder in a sourdough bowl because you don't have an ID? Dude.
Instead, I went to Salty's and got a fishwich:
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| Yes! |
The final pleasant surprise had to do with my trip home. I got on the ferry only to learn that I was on the SF - Angel Island - Alameda - Oakland ferry. So that added a good hour to the trip. Seriously. This time I decided to disembark in Oakland and get a taxi back to the hotel since I still needed to go back to my conference for 6pm. However, there was not a cab to be seen in this part of Oakland. A very large Bed, Bath and Beyond, but no cabs. Remember, my phone was dead, so I couldn't just call. Finally I located a hotel, got them to call me a cab, and made it back. It was now 4:30pm, giving me just enough time to shower, throw on different shoes, get another cab, and get back to the conference. Phew. Made it around 5:57pm. I had a very classy red sunburn to go with the purple top that I was wearing. Super classy!
There was one last, nice surprise. Seeing the air show over the bay from the ferry was pretty much sublime. And might have made this whole, entire, convoluted adventure worth it.
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