Rock ‘N’ Roll San Francisco Half Marathon 2015 Recap

Believe it or not, this was my first time running the Rock ‘N’ Roll San Francisco Half Marathon.
I drove up to the city the day before the race to get me bib. My alarm went off at 3:30am race morning. I live about an hour south of San Francisco and wanted to leave by 4am to give me plenty of time to park and get on the shuttles from finish line to the starting line. The shuttle buses were super organized and the line moved very quickly.
It was about 50 degrees out and the starting line was next to the beach, so there was a cold breeze. Every inch of me didn’t want to take my sweatshirt off and check it, but I didn’t want to run in it.  I gave in and finally took it off and wrapped my mylar blanket around me.  I headed to corral 2 for a Rock N Blog group pic and I finally got to meet Brian who writes Pavement Runner.  
There were 15 corrals.  We started maybe a minute or 2 apart from another.  

Now let me talk about the course for a second.  Oh my goodness gracious this course was cray cray!  Since San Francisco is my main metropolitan race area I have ran quite a few races up there.  I can honestly say that this one might be the hilliest half marathon course in SF, in my opinion.  When people come to San Francisco I would guess that they are prepared for hills and man oh man they sure got some yesterday!  

Mile 3 was basically one big huge hill for the whole mile.  From that hill though we had a beautiful view of the bay and the Golden Gate.  It is rare in SF to have a morning this clear without being fogged in.

The hill had some funny signs to read on our long run up it.

We came down the other side and made our way to the Golden Gate Bridge.  This race is one of the rare occasions that part of the bridge is closed and we get to run on it.  The turnaround is at the vista lookout point on the the other side of the bridge.After the bridge we ran through Krissy Field.  We had a great view of Alcatraz.The finish line was at the Civic Center.  This is on the other side of more hills.  It was a little brutal, but the last half mile is downhill thank goodness.  The weather was gorgeous.  I had a lot of fun.  This race had such a great rockin vibe, which helped with getting me through the hills.  If you are looking for a fun half marathon that isn’t flat, this one is awesome!

Want to run a Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon Series race?  Use code HALFCRAZYMAMA for $15 off registration!

 Have you ran Rock ‘N’ Roll San Francisco?