Yesterday I ran the half marathon in the Nike’s Women Marathon. Best idea I’ve ever had! I was completely surrounded by fit, beautiful women in every direction. I think the registration stats came out to 20,000 runners of which only 500 were men.
Some of my favorite moments were when the rising sun cast our 20-foot shadows on Crissy Field (a reward, I suppose for waking up at 5:30) and how the view from Seacliff opened up after climbing that cursed hill onto 5 miles of Ocean Beach. I wish I had a camera with me. It looked something like this, or this, or this, except more beautiful with a clear blue 8AM sky.
There were some funny moments too, like at around mile 6 when I passed by an oxygen bar, whatever those are for, or when at mile 12 I reached for water and they tried to give me Ghirardelli chocolate! ‘Twas definitely a WTF moment for me at a time when I only wanted to focus on my last mile. Nike and these other corporations have taken this marathon and made a total carnival for those who want that, though when I noticed that nobody running at my pace or faster were reaching for chocolate or stopping for the oxygen bar (including the two “Moms in Motion” with whom I was running the entire time!).
My friend made a good point: Why in the world did they set a cap on registration? Apparently, registration filled up on the very first day, so everyone knows that demand was much higher than the available supply. Since this raised money for charity (leukemia and lymphoma), the effect is that they have turned down donations for charity and reinforced the image that nonprofits are run like garbage. Considering that they raised $18.6M, couldn’t they have easily raised $37.2M if they accepted unlimited registrations?
