So, now it's the 5th of August and we're getting ready to bike from Larkspur, heading along the coast by Point Reyes and up to Jenner, California. We ended up staying a few days in Palo Alto and spending our time watching The Office (that's what she said), playing basketball with 8th graders (results: two games to two games), biking around Stanford, and making some more food (deep dish pizza, apple crumble, eggplant parmesan, zucchini bread, oatmeal cookies, pasta shmorgasborg night).

On Wednesday we DID briefly leave Palo Alto and took the Caltrain into San Francisco for the day just to check it out. We spent the day walking from the station all the way down the embarcadero along the water, passing by Fisherman's Wharf, and heading up into the city to see the Cable Car Museum and Chinatown.

Saturday, 8/2, Arrival to Larkspur, a/k/a one of the great, seemingly impossible relationships of our time:

On Saturday, we finally left Palo Alto and biked 30 miles into San Francisco, where Mike and Andrew were sitting outside of the San Fran Marathon convention place while I was inside checking it out, when two people that replied to an email i sent them on Craigslist spotted our bikes and sold me their Bib# for the first half of the marathon. Afterwards, we biked along the water and over the Golden Gate Bridge, down into Sausalito, and up into Larkspur near Muir Woods (which was another 20 miles). Upon arrival, our host Margie told us there were two full fridges of beer for us and that we should go hang out by the pool until dinner. So, we did. That evening we were also part of the dinner party along with Fernando (aka Nando) and his wife Shannon. After finishing dinner (chicken parm) and a few glasses of wine, we had a few more glasses of wine, while listening to Nando tell stories from the motherland. After a few more glasses of wine, I realized it was almost 11 and we all had to wake up at 4am so I could be driven into San Fran to run a half marathon.

1/2 Marathon Day, Sunday 8/3:

Rose at 4am, got changed, and drove into San Francisco. Mike and Andrew dropped me off near the start of the race. We made plans to meet after the race, either at the finish line or to take a shuttle bus "somewhere" if they were not in sight. Fine plan, what could go wrong? At any rate, i put my headphones on and ran the half marathon under a woman's name in 1hr37 minutes, which for having old shoes a size too small, biking 50 miles the day before, staying up late drinking wine, and feasting on chicken parm, was not so bad. The run was chilly but pretty flat up until the Golden Gate bridge, when it seemed like the past 5 miles were all hills, ending somewhere in Golden Gate Park.

If you didn't catch the foreshadowing earlier, when I finished the race Mike and Andrew were nowhere to be found, and so I got some food and water and hopped the shuttle back to the start of the race, where they were ALSO nowhere to be found. So i ended up walking around shivering for about an hour, where I saw the end of the marathon, the beginning AND end of the 5k, and helped several people find either the drop-off for the shuttle bus or the start of the race. Still, they were nowhere to be found. Eventually, they did show up, after having fallen asleep in the car and waking up after I had already taken the shuttle bus back into San Francisco, after they decided to follow a shuttle bus back to San Francisco to see where it went. But, after driving down the streets for 15 minutes yelling "MATT STRAUB!", they finally decided to park and look for me. The one good thing was that eventually I found a nice sweatshirt and got a free massage after the race, way after the race, when my core temperature had fallen to 48*.

Afterwards, we ended up driving into Chinatown and eating at an all-you-can-eat dim-sum place that had music playing on repeat that sounded like a recording of a dumpster being dragged behind a truck. It took us about 10 minutes to figure out how to order the food we wanted (which never really came). After beginning to feel miserable, we reached the breaking point and headed back to Larkspur to recover. We all passed out for hours and woke up, still feeling under the weather. But, eventually we went for a hike through a redwood forest for an hour or two and played with a french woman and her french dogs (Two bulldogs, a french bulldog, and a boxer). That night we met Kevin, Margie's son, took a soak in the hot tub, ate fajitas, and fell asleep watching a movie.

...

Yesterday, we babysat Kevin and drove him to the store to buy Rockband. After playing that game for a few hours we went outside to play some ping pong and went swimming in the pool. Last night we hung around and mapped out our next move, which now appears like we're biking 85 miles up to Jenner, California to stay in cabins with a fireplace.

That's it for now, who knows what we'll really end up doing.

total time running (matt): 4 hours, 10 minutes

- RMS & Mike (andrew's asleep)

Race Results:

Bib: 18434
Name: Lalanya Gawne
Gender: F
Age: 27
Hometown: Los Angeles CA
Place Overall: 139 out of 6679
Women: 16 out of 3696
F 20-29: 6 out of 1342
AgeGrade: 68.16% Place: 139
FINISH: 1:36:36 pace: 7:23
7.5 Mi: 56:24 pace: 7:32
Chip Time: 1:36:36