Usually, when I run a race in San Francisco I spend the night. Since I now have a baby, traveling looks a little different. I, therefore, made the 2.5-hour drive home Saturday evening and then turned around six hours later to make the drive back to San Francisco. What’s nice about driving to a big city at 3:30am is that there’s virtually no traffic! When I arrived to my prepaid parking space in San Francisco, I had to wait since they were out of parking spaces. How does a company (such as Spot Hero) presell you a parking spot, but then fills up the space leaving you without a parking spot? Fortunately, the attendant found a few more spaces in an adjacent lot. Parking in San Francisco can be difficult to say the least.

Rock n Roll San Francisco changed their starting line this year. Three days prior to the event, an email went out to all participants saying that there'd be wristbands for everyone to wear. At first, the wristband seemed like a cool idea, but in actuality, I’m not sure how great it turned out to be. 1) The bands were small and felt really tight on the wrist. Who wants to be wearing something tight on their wrist while running? 2) The colors were not synched properly. A group of people all in the same corral had different colors showing on their wristband. 3) The email said that the wristbands would “enhance your musical experience”. How so? I don’t recall experiencing any enhancement while out on course.

With the delay in finding a parking spot, I barely made it to the starting line after stopping to use the restroom. In the over 6,000 runners and the different start line procedure, I was able to locate my fellow Pro Compression people since we were all wearing the same California sock. We lined up and away we went!

Three weeks prior to Rock n Roll San Francisco, I ran the Shamrock’n half marathon with a time of 2:57:04. I ended up finishing Rock n Roll San Francisco with a time of 2:49:07. I was proud of this speed increase because I gained 142 feet at Shamrock’n and 1,471 feet at Rock n Roll San Francisco. I also stopped several times to take pictures along the course of RnRSF.

Some of my top highlights of RnRSF were running over AND under the Golden Gate Bridge, running in the Pier 39 area, and meeting up with so many of my running friends. Overall, I'd recommend this race.