Suzy-Q - I Scream, You Scream, We All Run for Ice Cream

I'm not gonna lie. Among the selling factors of joining TNT was getting a spot in the Nike Women's Half Marathon. It's a popular event. Finishers of the women's only half and full marathon don't get medals. San Francisco Firemen in tuxedoes and running shoes hand out Tiffany designed necklaces. The finisher t-shirts are Nike Dri-Fit women's shirts, not the boxy ones cut to fit men (oh, are they supposed to be unisex? whatever). Twenty thousand race entries are awarded though a lottery system. Or you can join TNT guaranteeing you a spot.

Here are a few other reasons I signed up in random order:

1: The location: San Francisco. Who doesn't love the city by the bay? And the race course isn't as hilly as everyone imagines. Its a nice run from Union Square, to the fairly recently renovated Ferry Building, along the Fisherman's Wharf, through the Presidio, around Golden Gate Park and out past the zoo for those doing the full.

2: The team within a team: the Marathoning Mamas. Who could ask for a better group of running partners and friends? These ladies are generous, gracious, comical, articulate, attractive, and intelligent to name a few of their more obvious attributes. I could go on and on but a lot of you know them anyway so you have a good sense of who these women are.

3: The ice cream. Yep. I confess and its true. I am tremendously looking forward to a chance to visit Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream (more than once, I hope). At our house we have an annual Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Social Experiment when we invite guests to bring ice cream ingredients to flash freeze batches of creative flavors using liquid nitrogen. Flavors like peanut butter and crystalized ginger; black pepper, strawberry and balsamic vinegar; or cherry and bacon. But the likes of the flavors at Humphry Slocombe we've never produced. And I am not sure that I'd want to make 'em. But, I do know I want to try them. I read about the place in a NY Times Magazine article that a FB friend posted and my decision to "recommit" to TNT was sealed. And because of that my friends, tomorrow morning, come 7:15 am I will be panting along yet another metro-area recreational path so I can have an ice cream cone (or a few) seven weeks from now.