Napa Valley Marathon Picture Post

Above is the loot. Below are the speakers from the dinner the night before the run.

Mary Coordt

Amby Burfoot
Amby said he was slightly injured and therefore not running the marathon. I looked up during the race and saw a wild and crazy looking dude running towards runners yelling out encouragement. I said "is that Amby??" and he said 'yeah, it's me!'.....one of those strange "is this real of fake" moments of a marathon.

We had the most awesome hotel room at La Residence. It had one of those beds that you lay down on and sink for a few minutes before you hit bottom. The best pre marathon night of sleep ever!

I was well prepared for the day ahead......

I think the top one was in the car after we got to the finish area to catch the bus...

and that ones on the bus....have to take lots of "before" cuz during and after is pretty crusty.

Above is the amazing view just next to the porta potties, lots of dudes just run out there and water the grapes.

The aboves are pretty self explanatory...we ran, it was sunny, Napa is beautiful, we ran some more.....Below was my view, notice I'm on gravel...it was hard to find but if it was there I was on it!

Did you know we have moss like that in CA?? There's a section of trees along a creek that parallels the Silverado Trail (which is actually the road we were running on and not a trail).

Mile 10 was a big deal for me, if you read the race recap post you will understand why.

We saw a few runners who chose to "not see" the Dumping Prohibited sign. It was perched atop one of the only banks to hide behind.

13, the actual real almost halfway point, although in my head we were already half way. The timing mat was up a hill at 13.1...yes, you can have a hill .1 from here : )

They don't show up here, but there were 6 hot air balloons at the end of the valley.

No shade to be found!

Lots of poppy's (poppies?? Neither one looks right to me)

20 was another big mile for me mentally.

Above, we just made our first turn of the race, if you look close you'll see the mile 23 marker on the rail of the bridge.

There was just a lot of running/walking/figuring out splits and what we were looking at for a finish time from mile 23 to 26. At 26 we make a right turn, go one block, then it 's a right turn into the finish shoot.

Finish shoot, not many people left around, but the announcer had a bit o fun trying to figure out if I was a princess or a ballerina...I am SO neither, just felt like running fancy today!

So then we were done! We look like we've been on a long tropical vacation!
I will dump the rest of the pictures on the photo site.