SFM Ambassador - Heck Yeah!

In case you didn't know what SFM stood for, you will from now! Expect to see it in many future blog posts. SFM stands for the San Francisco Marathon! I was recently chosen as a SFM running ambassador and I couldn't be happier! Wow, what an honor! (Full running ambassador profiles here.)

You're probably wondering, wow, running ambassador - what is that? Well, I'm probably going to be traveling to third world countries and holding orphan babies like Angelina Jolie! Errr no.. okay, so I won't be like a Goodwill Ambassador, but as a running ambassador I will be on a team of people who love running who will be helping to spread the word about the San Francisco Marathon and the incredible race that it is.
 

My first distance race in San Francisco was the Nike Women's Marathon back in October of 2005. This was my second full marathon and I (stupidly) thought that I could beat my first marathon time at the Rock N Roll Marathon in San Diego. You probably think that I trained on hills to prepare. Nope! Did I pay for that? Oh yeah! I suffered throughout the entire course and even after three months of speed training during group track runs, I only finished TWELVE SECONDS faster than my first race. Ugh. I trained to get faster on flat ground - which did help overall in my race, but not enough. I was miserable the whole time and swore never to run in San Francisco again!

But then, the next year, I decided to sign up for the San Francisco Marathon. It had been a year, I felt like I was in better shape, I had more marathons under my belt .. I could do this! Well, yet again, I suffered on the hills and struggled through the race. Had I trained on hills up until the race? No. Okay, as a smart person I was not being a smart runner. I never liked running on hills and didn't train on them, and because of this my performance suffered. After my 2nd mediocre race in SF I swore to never race there again. Period!

And then ..  I ran the Surf City half marathon and had a great race! (More on my race recap.) Soon after my friend Christina told me about the California Dreamin series and said that if I ran Surf City, San Francisco, and then Long Beach (a course I had done previously in a full), that I could get a special medal and jacket for completing the series. This totally caught my interest! I thought about it for a while, and decided to go for it. I ran the SFM half (No thanks on the full), and then the Long Beach Half .. and I did it! California Dreamin time! Kudos to the marketer who came up with that bundling deal!! (Race recap on the SF Half here.)

Not too long after running the SFM Half I saw a tweet on twitter about the running ambassadors. I immediately replied to show my interest. I L-O-V-E running. Running has done more for me than anything else in my life! (okay, besides my parents). Running is amazing and can change your life in so many ways. Its changed mine, and I want to take every chance I have to help make it change someone elses. Anyways, a few weeks after expressing my initial interest via a tweet, I got an email back with an application to become an ambassador. The application asked for a variety of things such as:

• What motivates you to run? What got you started running?
• Do you prefer to run alone or with others?
• Are you involved in the running community in your hometown?
• What are your running/fitness goals in the next year?
• What are your personal/professional goals in the next year?

My favorite question on the application was:

In 2010, we described the San Francisco Marathon as "worth the hurt".
What is running, marathoning, or the San Francisco Marathon
specifically "worth" to you?

My answer?

"Feeling your life change as you cross the finish line is
worth everything you sacrificed to get there."

I filled out my application and sent it in, crossed my fingers, tried not to be so embarrassed for my shameless self-promoting entry .. and then I waited. Part of me didn't feel that I deserved to win. I've had two other opportunities in the past to share my 'story'. The first was when I submitted my story to the Rock n Roll marathon in Phoenix, resulting in my Arizona Central Living front page cove rin 2005 in the feature article "What makes them run?" (Check out the article here.)  

My second bout with fame came in 2009 when I applied to the Rock N Roll Marathon Foot Locker Challenge team for the "race within the race" and was accepted to that! That was an incredible experience! When I applied to be a SFM running ambassador, I kind of thought well, I don't really deserve this. I've had my moments of fame already, shouldn't they pick someone else?

A few weeks had passed and I hadn't heard anything, so I thought hmm.. oh well. :o( I guess I didn't get it. And then .. I got an email saying I had made the team! OMG so exciting!! The SFM emailed and tweeted to those of us who had made it! This ensued with massive retweets of everyone on the team with congratulations! I swear, if you did a productivity study of our group, it dropped like a hot potato on that day. We were all so excited!

It has been so interesting to see the other ambassadors in the group and to read their blogs. On several occasions I have started on one blog, clicked on another, and then another after that.. until several hours had passed and I had done nothing but read running blogs for hours! The Internet is an amazing thing, you can connect to strangers in so many ways! Through being an ambassador I have been exposed to so many other interesting running blogs, and because of this I have updated a section of my own blog to include other blogs I follow.

So in case you couldn't decipher this from my blog up until this point, I will be running the SFM race in July .. and .. deep breath.. I will be running the full marathon! I swore off fulls after my last heartbreaking race this past June (more on that disappointment here) , but I think another full is in my cards, and I think this special race should be my next one. As a true SF native (born and raised in the city thank you -  Sunset District baby!) I love San Francisco with all of my heart. Its my favorite city in the world, the place I grew up, home to my family, hone of the majority of my friends, a great place to live at any age, and a place I will always call home.

Best part of the SFM? You get to run across the Golden Gate Bridge! Let me tell you - its amazing!!

San Francisco hills .. you've beat me twice, but this time I'll come and get you! Can't wait to run the course in July. want to come and join me? Registration opens in a few weeks on December 1st!