Aurora's Blog

After my fun ride up California with Dave and Dave, I made my way to SFO in the middle of the night, to catch the San Fran to Petaluma shuttle.

The first shuttle of the day didn’t leave until 5:30am. I hung out at the airport for about four hours, and got in two twenty-minute naps.

I was a little worried that I might be late to the race. The shuttle was scheduled to get in at 7am – right when the race started. (And the drop off point was about a mile and a half from the start line.)

Luckily, our awesome bus driver got us in around 6:40. I made it to the start with just enough time to grab my bib, check my bag, and line up. The volunteers were super helpful to us last-minuters!

It was pretty cold in Petaluma. People told me they’d been getting a lot of fog lately, which I actually appreciated so much during the run. Moisture in the air! Sweet, precious moisture. (I have the absolute driest skin of anyone, anywhere. Obviously, L.A. is the perfect place for someone like me to live. (That’s sarcastic. because it’s so very dry out here.)) Running through clouds of moisture was such a wonderful gift!

Because of cold weather, I ended up wearing every piece of clothing I brought with me. I put my pajama pants on over my running pants. I added an extra shirt as well. In total, I was wearing 3 shirts and 2 pairs of pants.

I shuffled through the start, all bundled up. Through the crowd, I saw the cow mascot out there there giving us high-hooves (cow high-fives), which was fun.

I moo-ved toward him, and got my high-hoove as well. (There was a ton of cow word play at the race, so you’ve gotta let me have one fun attempt with it.)

I quickly decided I didn’t feel like running, so I hung out in the back of the pack with some walkers. I met this fun, silly group of adult siblings. (There were 4 brothers and 1 sister doing the half. They had even more siblings (plus their mom) in the 5k.)

I also walked for a while with Marc, a man who started doing half marathons because his wife got swept at a Disney race (her first one). She was pretty upset about it (understandably). Instead of telling her to give up, he stepped up and helped her train!

She’s gone on to do a bunch of races, and has never gotten swept again. I guess all the training helped her, ‘cause she was running far out ahead of us!

He had some fun stories of races they’d done and people they’d met. Eventually, I let him walk out in front of me, ‘cause I was getting tired and needed to slow my walking pace. (What a sad sentence, right? That I can’t even keep up with someone who’s walking? Wah wah.)

In my defense, this course was hard!  (Super fun, for sure. But still hard.)

And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.