Running Cool - that's the San Francisco Marathon - Part I

I keep asking the question -- Why do I do this? Today, I woke up at 3am -- I remember the days when 3am was when I got home! Thank God I'm still on Boston time -- that means 3am in San Francisco is 6am in Boston. When you look at it this way, it was not bad at all.

I wanted to be early at the race venue -- for one thing, I wasn't sure about the parking conditions and I wanted to get an assured slot somewhere, and 2nd, I wanted to catch Wayne (SFRunner) before he started off on his wave.

It was still dark and the lights at the Bay Bridge were still on. A cold start to race day!

The thing about San Francisco at 4:30am is that is it cold -- at least by my thin-blood standard! It was probably in the high 50s or low 60s ºF. I wore my black singlet with my number attached, a t-shirt over it and a jacket on top. I was planning on going back to my car before the 5K race started and strip down to the singlet. Of course, that never materialized -- more about that later.

At the Starting Line way before any of the runners queued up.

It was a long walk towards the starting line from the parking lot where I left my car -- a good slow warm-up. I was looking for Wayne but I didn't see him or couldn't recognize him in the crowd. An amazing sight appeared in front of me -- there was a row of Portalets on the sidewalk and you could see lines and lines of runners waiting to get in!!!

Portalet Queues -- These were busy before the start of the race!!

I knew Wayne was in Wave 3 so I decided to hang around that area to see if I could catch him. Fortunately, I saw a familiar silhouette -- I called out to Wayne and he turned and smiled. We met up with one of his friends, Greg, who is running his first marathon since surviving prostate cancer -- another runner’s moving story. We took a couple of pictures and then Wayne went back in to finish warming up before the start of his wave.

Wayne and his friend, Greg

Greg took our picture but his hands were a bit shaky!

I stayed behind to take pictures of the first few waves as they started their run. They organized the different waves based on your best marathon or half-marathon times. As such, the first wave was made up of the elite runners and so on and so forth. There were a total of 8 waves.

Runners became a blur as the First Wave started their race

Around the 5th wave, I happened upon a few Filipinos and approached them. Surprise, surprise!! It turned out to be a TV crew from TFC -- The Filipino Channel -- ABS-CBN's connection to the rest of the world! My co-KAPAMILYA!!! They were covering a celebrity Filipina runner here in San Francisco. I was introduced to Rosemarie St. Pierre (I hope I got it correct). Turned out she's another success story in running. She is a teacher but used to be obese -- over 210 lbs -- when she started her journey in running. Today, she's 110 pounds and runs marathons!! The TFC crew was covering this for Adobo Nation, a television program focused on Overseas Filipinos with significant achievements.

The Running Success -- 210lbs to 110lbs due to running -- Rosemarie St. Pierre

When the host, Jaja Bolivar, found out I was from Manila, ABS-CBN at that, and heard that I came all the way here to run in the San Francisco Marathon, I became the object of a television interview!!! Imagine that, I had to come all the way to San Francisco to actually get on-cam!!

Adobo Nation host Jaja Bolivar with a me in a souvenir shot. If she looks familiar, she used to come out in Wazzup! Wazzup! on Studio 23.

The camera crew -- Chris and Benrose!! Galing, waking up to be around by 5am!

Soon, it was down to the last wave – wave number 8. Towards the end, with the bulk of the runners already off, there were still a number of stragglers who were being coaxed to start their run – they have to cross the starting line so that their times could actually starting recording. When the last runners were off, I saw a familiar figure – I called out BALD RUNNER!! – he turned around and waved!! He and his family were one of the last to actually start the San Francisco Marathon!! Unfortunately, that was my brief interaction with him and I didn't have my camera ready -- sorry, no pictures. I guess I’ll have to wait for him back in Manila to actually talk.

We were now in a one-hour break before the start of the 5K race. I’ll stop here. Will post the continuation later.