SFist stayed true to its pledge on Friday and drunk itself into submission on Saturday at the North Beach Jazz Fest. [Ed. Note - After sitting in a park drinking beer for four hours, don't head over to a nearby bar and have two martinis.] We're going to guess that among the revelers at Washington Square Park, none were planning to run the San Francisco Marathon on Sunday. At six Sunday morning, while SFist was snoring it's hangover away, thousands gathered to run twenty-six miles around the city - and most were done long before SFist finally made it to the medicine cabinet for Alka-Seltzer.
For one couple, it was a special race - Bob Pokorny proposed to his girlfriend Suzanne Armbruster at the starting line. While Suzanne said yes, and ran the race with a smile brighter than the new rock on her finger, our suggestion to potential proposers who may doubt the outcome of their proposition to wait until the race when she'll be way too tired to say no and amped on endorphins to boot. In what SFist is sure was an absolutely touching sight, the two held hands as the crossed the finish line.
SFist thinks the marathon route has to be one of the best tours of the city - although if we ever ran a marathon, we'd probably try to find one in Nebraska instead of a hilly city like our own. If you can't run twenty six miles at once, might we suggest bicycling or driving the route? It's a whole lot easier on the knees.
Be sure to catch the the Olympic Marathon this summer, which of course will be reprising the original course from the ancient city of Marathon to Athens (though, like almost everything in Athens, it's still not quite finished).