SF Marathon Ambassador 2012

Somewhere amid the hustle and bustle of 2011 ending, I forgot to mention that I'm an ambassador again for the SF Marathon for 2012! I served as an SFM ambassador last year and had a ton of fun, and when applications for 2012 were called I thought about it for a bit thinking maybe fresh blood would be more applicable for the position and I shouldn't apply  ... but in the end I turned in an application and was really excited a few months later when I found out I had made the cut again.

The Ambassador team for 2012 was much larger than 2011, and 5 of the 33 of us were returning ambassadors. The day we found out we were accepted I was out to lunch with my peer networking group from Athena and was trying so hard not to look at my Blackberry as it dinged over and over again as members of the group emailed and tweeted with their excitement. I finally got to join in on the chatter when I got back to work, and sadly all productivity flew out the window that afternoon. Shh, don't tell anyone.

This past weekend I worked my first event on behalf of the SF Marathon. They had a booth at the Carlsbad Marathon expo, and hot on the heels of hustling for two days at a tradeshow in Vegas for work, I was hustling at the expo for the race. (More on my Vegas trip on my blog Vegas Baby.)

As I've mentioned before I love my day job, and I do enjoy going to tradeshows, but they are very tiring and are not even half as much fun as working a race expo. At the medical tradeshows I attend not everyone is interested in our product, we get some negative feedback here and there, we get into price discussions and profitability debates, and the hours are long and standing dressed up in heels for days on end is a physical strain. In complete opposite to this is working the SFM booth. I got to wear comfortable clothes and flat shoes, people come by raving about how much they love the race, past participants drag their friends over to point to the map and show off the race course, and almost everyone I talk to seems somewhat interested in what I had to say. If that's not an ego boost I don't know what is! (A more in-depth look at my thoughts on medical vs running tradeshows on my blog Tradeshow Warrior.)

Throughout the course of the day I was excited to have signed up 17 people for the race, 85 people for the newsletter, and sold 30 shirts. Well, I mean, not that anyone's counting or anything, but I think I had a stellar day. It was also a blast to talk to runner's all day, and I felt like I had street cred or something from having lived in San Francisco and San Diego, having run both the SF Marathon and the Carlsbad Marathon, and races all around the area. When people started asking about various races or locations, I knew what I was talking about. Now if only I could remember all of the science behind the cross-linking of collagen for my day job .... but I digress. 

The day of the expo was pretty long and I didn't have time to bring something for lunch so I ended up snacking on bananas, power bars, and yogurt at the expo. Not the best day-before-the-marathon fueling strategy, but oh well. After the expo I met up with Tara and Ben at Leucadia Pizza to carbo load. Tara and I were planning on running the marathon together the following day, and I wanted to have dinner with her to see where her confidence was and to try to psych her up for the race. We had done several long runs together and I knew she was physically capable of hitting her goal time (4:20), I just worried about her confidence in herself and her marathon ability. SO much of a marathon is mental, and I wanted to do whatever I could to boost her self-esteem.

We parted ways around 7pm and made plans to meet at 5am to carpool up to Carlsbad the next morning. Ouch, way too early. Starting a marathon at 6am is so cruel!

Next up, my race recap.