by Calvin Lee (with the help of Tammy Wu)
If you find this commentary to be too boring - there are links to
other Marathon recaps below.
scroll down a bit on this page for 2012 results...
This map is the official map found on the Nike Marathon 2011 website. There
is a PDF version of it, but it still isn't very clear. Please check for
yourself for the NWM 2012 map - marathon courses are known to change from time
to time.
It does show the 26.2 miles for the marathon and has the half marathon mapped
out as well.
Disclaimer - use at your own risk. I'm not a marathon expert. Nothing here is considered professional advice. We're not affiliated with NIKE. Please get more information directly from the Nike Womens Marathon web page - search google, etc. This page is written by Calvin Lee (I also ran this marathon, along with my wife Tammy Wu).
Hasn't been announced yet, but when I find out I will post it here. The best I can find is that it is usually the 3rd Sunday in October.
The above data does not include the half marathon numbers - which adds up to over 20,000 runners.
RESULTS!
NWM 2012 Detailed
Results from PSE (available now!)
click on "Results" - I like this format the best.
Detailed NWM 2012 results from
Sportstats (available now!)
This page gives you your rank within your category
NWM 2012 Real Time Results (race day)
First click on "Marathon/Half Marathon",
then "watchlist", then click on "find runner"
Where are the pictures for NWM 2012?
Pictures for 2012 Nike Women's Marathon (check back soon)
Tammy and I are recreational runners who live in Modesto, California (USA). Tammy grew up in Georgia, and I grew up in New York.
We enjoy making web pages. Some of them quite bad (perhaps like this one). We also happen to be surgeons. Tammy is a plastic surgeon and I am a Trauma/General surgeon - but this doesn't mean we know anything special about running. We have a practice together called Surgical Artistry. And Surgical Artistry is the founding title sponsor of the Modesto Marathon. Tammy ran the Nike Womens Marathon 2011 with a finish time of 4:24 (4 hours and 24 minutes). I managed about 6:02 (I'm not that great at running). I have "run" 5 marathons up to this point (blog written 10/19/2011). Tammy has run 3 marathons, but she has run a whole bunch of half marathons.
Our personal page on facebook is: www.facebook.com/modesto - feel free to contact us or "friend" us.
Tammy and I turned ourselves into a "team" and we entered together. This way we could be picked together or rejected together. The process was painless and we had to give credit card info when we registered. I know there were many people who didn't get picked. We highly valued our entries. I started feeling guilty that I had taken someone's spot. But my wife didn't want to run it without me.
This was hard. We booked one right after getting an entry through the online lottery system. Most of the hotels were already taken. We found a hotel room at the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel. I'm not sure I'd want to be this high up on a hill next year. This was a steep and long climb to this hotel from the start line (considerations for after the race). When the bus dropped us off after the race, it was quite the hike up. And then it was quite the hike down when I went to catch the Bart station. I actually felt like I got blisters from walking up this hill the day before the race! These hills are much greater incline than the hills found during the Nike Marathon and half marathon courses - so don't be too discouraged.
I really enjoyed talking to the other runners and Nike representatives on facebook. They helped motivate me to run and train. They sent me schedules, and helped calculate for me how steep the hills were. There were some Nike+ events too, but I don't have that so I can't comment. We had fun entering into a contest that Nike had for their Runway Crew. Tammy made it past the first round with over 100 popular facebook votes, but didn't get picked in the second round. The contest was fun and we made new friends through it. When we got to San Francisco it was fun to meet some of the people that we had met over facebook! I felt like I met celebrities - I knew them by their pictures but it was great to finally meet them in person. Going to a marathon is always a bit confusing, but getting some answers on facebook ahead of time helped tremendously. I randomly ran whenever I felt like it. Tammy on the other hand followed a program from Runnersworld. This is a screenshot of that Runners world Marathon Plan: Break 4:00 or Bust! - she tried to follow this as much as possible.
This can be found directly in the links above at Runnersworld. I think you have to pay for other time schedules in addition to the magazine.
My wife, Tammy, striking a pose for the Nike Runway Contest.
This video features the 8 winners of the Nike Runway Contest 2011.
Congratulations!!
Mostly women runners at this marathon and half marathon. It felt to me that there were about 1:15 ratio of men to women. That's what it felt like at my part of the marathon. I think most of the male runners were there to support their wives who were also running. I ran because my wife asked me to, otherwise, I might have been too intimidated to run with 20,000 highly driven marathoning women. From my perspective, the women runners and organizers made me feel very welcomed in the race. I was happy to be there.
Update: For the marathon itself, 8% of the finishers were male according to the finish result statistics.
Tammy and I live in Modesto, CA which is about 2 hours drive to San Francisco (sometimes less time). But we drove halfway and parked at the BART station (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and rode the BART into Powell station. We parked on Saturday for free at the Dublin/Pleasanton station, and paid about $5.50 each person for a one way ticket. When we got to Powell station, we walked up Stockton street to get to the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins hotel - it's a hike with luggage so travel light!
I forgot my race number holder belt, and I forgot to get the little pebbles out of my shoe and sock. The sock I wore was the new to the market: Sigvaris PERFORMANCE socks. Minor annoyances to have a pebble inside my sock (or was it my shoe - doesn't matter). But I remembered to bring some vaseline for between my toes this time! And managed to remember my GPS watch. I wish I had set my GPS watch earlier. I didn't get a reading until mile 2 of the race.
Surgical Artistry (my medical office) sells Sigvaris Recovery and Sigvaris Performance socks. We also carry CEP socks and sleeves. These products complements my vein practice. Yes, this is a shameless plug for compression socks. We are sometimes found at the following Marathon expos: Sacramento CIM (California International Marathon), Santa Rosa Marathon, Fresno Two Cities Marathon, Santa Barbara Marathon, and of course the Surgical Artistry Modesto Marathon
We went on Saturday afternoon. It was very crowded, and loud we didn't stay long. We also went to Niketown, and same thing over there. Big popular crowds. We enjoyed the gait analysis though and learned a lot about the way we ran - so it was worthwhile. This is unlike other marathon expos because they didn't have other sports clothing or compression sock (like me to sell socks) vendors there.
The expo really includes what's in the tent at union square and Niketown. You can get race specific items, such as posters, and t-shirts at Niketown. The DJ at Niketown was Marcus Lee, and he shares some of his sounds here: http://soundcloud.com/marcuslee/minds-exposed-2011-v-10 (relive some of the music from the event!)
We like eating at this restaurant on O'Farrell street: Santorini Restaurant in San Francisco - we've gone there a few times before. I didn't want to try anything too different from my usual before the race. And we also ate at the Japanese restaurant across from Santorini's - another favorite of ours. We weren't part of team in training - they had a big dinner party the night before.
We had the option of bag checking before the race. As you can see from the map the start and finish are far apart. The bag check scene was very crowded for us - perhaps we should consider getting to the start line a lot earlier. We got there about 45 minutes before the start of the race which was 7am. It was so jammed packed people. It's not easy having a race for 22,000 or 24,000 people. We didn't have the special Nike + bag check privileges - I'm not sure what they are but perhaps it's worth checking out.
Tammy and I got separated during bag check, so I didn't know where she went. I started on the sidewalk outside of the start area, because it was too crowded for me to get in. I eventually got through the barricades (just pushed it aside) and made it into the race. I figured Tammy could handle herself and hoped that she found a spot in the corral that she wanted. Later I found out that she started outside of the starting area, just as I had.
As I had mentioned earlier, I wish I had started my garmin GPS watch earlier. The tall buildings must have made it hard to find the satellites.
The scenery was awesome, and the weather was perfect for marathon running. It was relatively tight running quarters till mile 12 where the half marathon folks separated off. But throughout the race, I never felt alone. The hills slowed everyone down, so it almost looked like a bottleneck. The water stations were well stocked. I did carry my own water belt in addition because I thought I could cut down on disposable cups.
The Hills
I had calculated ahead of time that the first big hill averaged about a 5.5% incline on the treadmill (as a treadmill setting). I think I was right. Tammy thinks that it's more like 6%. Either way, I was close. I ended up walking up the hills and enjoying the scenery so it was no big deal. Going down them, I let myself loose and ran at speeds I could only dream of. I live in Modesto - not much hills there so I don't usually get to run that fast. Toward the end of the race, I couldn't move my feet up or down the hills - strange how that would be. So I couldn't fly down those hills. My quads though.. I am writing this on post-race day #3 are still burnt out from the experience!
It was great to finish the race. Finishing the race is better than chocolate! There were no naked firemen ... just firemen in Tux.
Tammy is gluten and dairy intolerant. At first there were only bagels - they had run out of bananas at the time Tammy finished (4:24). She felt like she was going to starve. But about 45 minutes later - more food came to the rescue. I finished at 6:02 and there were no shortages of food. We had to walk a bit to get to the buses, but the wait wasn't long for us. It dropped us off at Union square and we had to get back to our hotel where we had them hold our luggage. By the time we got back to the hotel it was after 1pm and the hotel wouldn't let us have the room for later, but we used the bathroom there to clean up a bit and wear our finisher's T-shirt and bling. Then we had to drag our luggage down the hill to catch the Bart home to Modesto, CA.
We had a GREAT time. We can't wait to do it again next year. Best part for me is making new friends - whom I met at the marathon and online (facebook). I would try to get a hotel lower down on the hill, and get to bag check earlier. Those are the main things I would do differently. Thank you Nike for putting this all together and benefiting cancer research!
These recaps give you a better sense of the race itself - mile by mile! They are so good, I'm not going to list my mile by mile recap which will pale in comparison:
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Looking for a California Marathon to run in March?
The official webpage for the Surgical Artistry Modesto Marathon is
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