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Thursday, October 18, 2012

San Francisco RUN NWM

The weekend in San Francisco more than made up for a terrible marathon.  Megan and I got in super duper late on Thursday night.  Like 3am CST late/early.  We crawled in to bed in a mega shady hotel and crashed.  We woke up, showered up, packed up and called a cab to take us to our hotel for the weekend.

An hour wait and a $50 cab ride later, we arrived at this adorable victorian 3 story home.  We were able to ditch our luggage to explore the city, despite not being able to check in for another 6 hours (and our bags were delivered to our room later that day, win).

A pic from our 'hood.

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We walked down to the expo to pick up our race packets.

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There was a Nike "styling" at the expo which was pretty cool.  Ignoring the fact that my outfit I'm wearing (shoes included) was probably $400-500.  But I do love the orange jackety thing.

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After spending some time at the expo and then headed to our main Friday treat:  Bay Area brewery tours!  Someone *cough* Megan *cough* was somehow still on Mountain time (which is weird because we live in the central time zone) and thought we were going to miss our brewery tour, but in actuality, we were over an hour early.  Luckily there was a super cute coffee/bistro, Creamery, for us to hang out at. 
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We got lattes and the most amazing strawberry crepe of my life.  I may or may not have debated licking my plate (definitely may).

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After creating a nice base for our booze, we hopped in a van with a bearded dude and another couple, ready to embark on our brewery tours!

First stop:  The Thirsty Bear Brewery

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Our first stop included 2 beers and lunch.  The food was amazing and so were the beers.

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Second stop:  Southern Pacific Brewery

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This brewery was in a huge warehouse looking place, and I was shocked how many people our age were hanging out drinking at 2ish in the afternoon on a Friday.  How do I get your jobs?!?!?  kthx  We got a flight of beers to sample.  Mmmm.

Third stop:  Speakeasy Ales & Lagers

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The final stop of the tour was truly in a giant warehouse.  The serving area was a little window with beer, and 98% of the space was taken up by the giant brewing vats (vats? is that the correct terminology?  at this point I had too many "samples" to remember much, apologies).  We got 2 sweet poker chips to use for any 2 beers we wanted on the menu.

When all was said and done, we hopped back in the van and were dropped off at home.  Totally worth the money, and it was great to get to see a few different places and have a sober driver during the process.  :)

We did some shopping and finished the night with late night sushi.  Essentially past midnight as far as our stomachs were concerned.  Ooops.

Saturday morning we decided to get in to "runner" mode and do a shake out run.  Yay for us and being productive!  And responsible!  Also yay for my Saturday morning class being cancelled, because sitting in your hotel room with a mic'd headset on for 3 1/2 hours while on vacation is not so awesome.

As always, shake out run is code for running to stores to shop, and we ended up at a giant mall.  We did some brief shopping (ok we were there for hours, in our sweaty clothes, oops), until we finally decided to head back, shower up, and come back looking more presentable.

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And presentable we did.
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Had to look nice to meet our BFFs Allyson Felix, Shalane Flanagan, Kara Goucher, and Joan Benoit Samuelson.  Duh.  Insert runnergirl geek out here.

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More expo, more shopping, MORE TIME ON OUR FEET (what was that about being smart responsible marathoners??  DOES NOT COMPUTE.)

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We ended up back at our hotel room around 9-10pm, which made it a full 12-13 hours on our feet before race morning.  We're awesome.

You got to see how Sunday went, and then Sunday afternoon we headed to a corner bar that was close to our hotel to gorge on delicious foods and await the Packers Sunday night game.
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Except "Sunday night" in San Fran is like 5pm.  It was awesome.  And still daylight.  And thus concludes our awesome time in San Fran.  Until next time!

And hint, it won't be to run.  Eff you hills.

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