Streets of San Francisco

Another week with another week of travel with another opportunity to run in a different city. As runners all know, we get way bored with the 4-5 different directions you can run from around your home, but with a busy life, you still wind up going out that boring six mile “out and back” loop from your house.

If you’re like me, you’ve mapped out the 18 weeks of training and I’m anal about not missing a given training day’s run. That means throwing the running gear into your Tumi bag and sometimes doing a 10PM run on a treadmill at a Marriott Courtyard.

The “flipside” of the crappy treadmill at 10PM is a run in a great city. Having a job that requires travel affords me the opportunity to throw in the running shoes and “mix it up” with a run in another city. You almost get the euphoria of a race day when you get to lace ‘em up with a run in another town—see “I’ll Take Manhattan”—my blog about running in New York city this year.

My latest great run in a great city was San Francisco. One of the greatest cities in the US—my wife and I love to travel there with so much to offer and even took the kids there this year on a city vacation. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my greatest “bucket list” runs was over the Golden Gate bridge to Tiburon with a ferry ride back. If you happen to have a “hills” day on the training schedule, you certainly have those as it’s the hilliest urban city I’ve run in.

This trip provided awesome weather and had a modest four mile run on the calendar. Staying downtown, I had a number of directions I could have ventured out, but chose a run toward the financial district, then down to the embarcadero. I played an hour of “hooky” from work and ventured out late afternoon with the sun out and a cool breeze—AWESOME!

I had a bit of elevation on the first half mile out and on the return. The rest was filled with great scenery including the Bay Bridge, farmer’s market, embarcadero, and Coit Tower.

All the above beats the heck out of dodging minivans on a early morning run in suburbia.

A footnote on the training program, I’m halfway through with one 20+ run under my belt with three more 20+ in the plan before taper. Knock on wood that the leg is holding up well.