Nike Women's Half Marathon Recap - Part 1

I'll start this race recap with the expo first.

My daughter and I went to the expo on Saturday morning.  I had heard many things about this particular expo and even though some of those things were negative, I was looking forward to actually going to my first race expo.

Walking up Powell street towards Union Square I could see many people sporting their TNT apparel as well as Nike race apparel.  I was excited to get my own.  I already knew I wanted to get a cap and zip hoodie.

Rounding the corner of Powell and Geary streets I saw the expo tent and all the billboard sized signs for the race.  There was definitely a buzz in the air.

Bib pick up was really quick and easy.  The volunteers filled my pink (yay!) race backpack with my bib, chip, course map, and lots of flyers and coupons.  We proceeded to get my pace bracelet and then walked around to see what else was there.

The tent was packed and true to the comments I had read about ths expo, it was disappointing.  Not much to see or do.  There were smoothies, Gatorade samples, Nike sport bra fittings, custom Nike shoe designs, a DJ, massages, an area where you could sign up to receive messages from either Mia Hamm, Serea Williams, or Joan Benoit.  Whoever you chose would call you at 6am race day to give you some words of encouragement, then call someone of your choice when you passed mile 6 and then I would get a congratulatory call after I crossed the finish line.  Seemed cool enough and my daughter was excited that Mia Hamm was part of this so I signed up and of course all phone calls were from Mia Hamm.  There were probably a few other things to see but I can't rememer at the moment.  Pretty uneventful :(

Outside there was yoga, Kashi cereal and Ghiradelli chocolate samples, and the Power Balance pace leaders.  We got a few samples and then headed across the street to the Niketown store.

First though I had to see my name amongst all 20,000 runners on the wall of names.  On our way to see this look who I ran into:

Dmity and Sarah of Run Like A Mother!

It took a few minutes but we were able to find my name.

We made our way inside the store.  Four floors of Nike stuff.  It was a madhouse!  There was a DJ playing loud music, someone talking over a microphone and intervewing runners and all the buzz and excitement that came from the hundreds of people in the store.  Employees were carrying armfuls of inventory to replenish stock - it was a sight for sure. 

You name it and they had it.  From jackets, sweatshirts, t-shirts, tech tees, shorts, capris, arm warmers, water bottles, hats, jackets, engraving on your ipod/iphone, customized messages on shirts and more.  I'm sure they made a ton of money; they got $90 of mine :)

We had a soccer game to get to so after one final picture we headed home.