A long run to Muir Beach

We had our final long training run before the marathon this weekend, and had invited Bill and Melissa to come spend the weekend with us so they could see how much their grandson has changed since the trip to Oregon. I'm not sure they understood that they were also signing on for a full day of childcare and ferrying the runners to the start and from the finish back home again. But they were very accommodating of our wishes, which was awfully generous, considering our wishes were very specific and rather self-centered.

Way back in January or February, a friend had a birthday party at Muir Beach and we all went to the rustic seaside Pelican Inn for dinner afterwards. This friend had a friend who showed up at The Pelican in running togs, having just bounded over from San Francisco. I was totally impressed and jealous at the same time, thinking I would never be able to do such a thing and still wondering if maybe I actually just might. So naturally, now that we're training for a (very hilly) marathon, this seemed like a fitting last training run. The night before we sat down to map out our course, and I was disappointed to discover that it wasn't nearly as long a run as I had thought. A mere 14 miles from the south end of the Golden Gate. We needed more like 21. So we tacked on some running through the city, with the serendipitous discovery of some unused tickets to the Cal Academy that were set to expire the next day. We could start there, leave Jack with his grandparents to explore the fabulous new museum, run through Golden Gate park, up Ocean Beach, through the Presidio, and over the bridge. Then up over the headlands, down to Rodeo Lagoon, over some more headlands, down to Tennessee Valley, and over some more and some more headlands, and down to Muir Beach and our reward: greasy food at The Pelican. So that is just what we did.Let me just say, it was hard, but really not that hard. Is that amazing? The human body is a wondrous thing. It really makes me wonder how much more we are capable of, than sitting in our cars and at our desk jobs. I took a kind of preposterous amount of photos for a run, but it was kind of preposterously beautiful and I had my camera phone right in my hand the whole time (it was like I was running a relay, except I was running the whole thing myself, and it was very much longer than any relay I've ever heard of). So you can go here for the full annotated version of the trip.

Meanwhile, Jack was having a great time with his grandparents at the Cal Academy.  First he did some looking at some fish. I was told he really liked the fish.



Then he played with Grandma at the kiddie corner.

Then he had some food. Yummy banana!



Then he had a little snooze in the shade.



Then he romped around on Grandma...



...and on Grandpa.



And he had another little snooze in the car on the way to Muir Beach to meet mommy and daddy. And he was so well behaved at dinner, while mommy and daddy scarfed down fish and chips and three different desserts in an attempt to replenish all their lost calories, and he even tasted his first fish, but unfortunately we don't have any photos of that because somebody was too busy stuffing her face to take photos (hint: it wasn't Grandma).

I am going to miss these training runs. They've been a great excuse to get out and see a lot more of the parkland around here than we ever had before. I won't miss the stress of trying to figure out what to do with Jack so we can squeeze our miles in (and I am highly amused that we actually thought we could train for this thing just bringing him along in the jogging stroller), but I will miss the impulse and motivation to get us out of the house and out there in big bad beautiful California.