The streets of San Francisco! By some small miracle I've managed to survive one more weekend of training! Got an early start and left the house at 4:30am to meet other members of our team to carpool. It rained the entire way into the city and we figured it wouldn't be much better at our destination. It was in fact raining pretty steadily and I think we all started to second guess our desire to do 20 miles! Cold, rain, and we're out in it....sounds fun doesn't it? As luck would have it it cleared up a bit and while we did get rained on a fair amount, it wasn't miserable. Before heading out, the coaches explained what we could expect.....I think we would all agree that perhaps they had left out a few key points out!

I know I mentioned hills in last week's post and have since come to the conclusion that I had mistaken what a hill truly looks like! The worst of the route came about quickly when we headed up hill and past the Cliff House and through some sort of dirt trail with dozens of stairs.....they definitely left that out of the spiel we'd had to start with! Lots and lots of VERY steep inclines~ it took 2 hours to complete 6 miles!

But really, if you're going to be subjected to torture, it should at least be in a beautiful environment. We had gorgeous views of the Golden Gate bridge, the beach with crashing waves, and some spectacular homes! Miles 7 through 11 were fairly uneventful but equally beautiful as we wound our way through Golden Gate park. Ahhh but there's always something....at mile 12 we came upon the lovely Lake Merced and were told that it's an easy 4 miles around the lake. There comes a point where you start to feel a certain desperation and you wonder if you'll actually ever make it back to your car! Trust me......we all felt it....Lake Merced looked as though it were another 20 miles! But by about mile 16 I got my second wind and felt pretty good. That was before I realized that there had been a slight "mis-calculation" and that the 4 miles back to the car was actually 6!! Now you may think....what's an extra 2 miles? I can tell you that the difference between 18 miles from last week and 22 this week was measurable!!

Alas.....I made it and felt much better than last week! It seems that I have a shin splint but aside from that...life is good! The picture on this page is of my walk partners and I AFTER we had completed the big 22, looking pretty good if I do say so myself!

We're schedule to do another 22 miles next weekend in Moraga.....got it licked! ;)