When I saw scheduling assign me a San Francisco layover, you could say I was pretty excited. Not only had I never been to SFO, I was working with one of my favorite fellow flight attendants so I knew this was going to be a great trip.
After going out Saturday night in San Fran, AND getting an extra hour for sleep thanks to daylight saving time, I woke up bright and early to do something that even six months ago I would have laughed in your face about. I woke up to run.
Now, I would say I am 100% not a runner. And it’s even still weird for me to admit I enjoy running on layovers. In new cities I don’t get bored and actually enjoy looking around at 
new things and getting a little lost before before finding my way back to my hotel. At home, running is much harder for me. Probably because of the humidity but also, there’s no novelty in it. So anyway, as soon as I saw SFO on my schedule, I knew I’d be running across the Golden Gate Bridge.
What I didn’t know was that a couple hundred other people would also be running across the bridge at the same time as me. My Uber driver, noticing the destination and my running clothes, asked if I was doing the marathon. ‘HA! Marathon? Me? No no sir. Just a little job across and back.’ But it turns out, there was a half marathon that day and it was going exactly the same way I planned my jaunt.
I get to the visitor’s center, about as close to the bridge as you can get, and sure enough see dozens of people flying by the “Mile 4” sign. I ask an official looking man and explain, “I am in no way a part of this race, I just want to run across the bridge. If I follow them will I get there?” He tells me, yes that’s the only way to go. But since I didn’t have a bib number on, they may try to stop me. But if I squeeze in between some runners, I should be okay. Perfect. Put my headphones in, queue up some tunes, and merge in with people who are probably thinking I just cheated a third of the race.
No one stopped me for my lack of race number and on I went, following the crowd over one of the most iconic bridges in the country.
The thing with being “in” the race though is now I have to follow that route to get back to the other side. So after crossing the bridge, the route turned to the right into a lookout point parking lot offering beautiful views of the sun rising over the city. It then went down toward the bay and under the bridge. Then went back up to the other side where we started to head back east.
Once back on the city side of the bridge, we were in a different area than where we started and I ended up passing the visitor’s center. I had run just under five miles, I had a legitimate ‘runners’ high’ and people were standing on the side of the route cheering! For me!! Well, for the real racers but hey, they didn’t know I’d snuck in. I thought, ‘Could I really finish this? Maybe they’ll give me a metal!’ But then I saw it was still another four miles, and I laughed and said, maybe next time.
Five miles may not seem like a lot to some people. One of my best friends runs five miles daily. But this may have been my longest run, ever. Yes, I stopped and took some pictures at the lookout and maybe walked for 30 seconds here and there. But, five miles! I did it! As I’ve gotten older I’ve started to realize how amazing my body is. That’s not a brag. Ask any girl my age and she’ll give you stories about how she’s struggled with body image at least once in her life. For me, it was always my legs. It still is if I’m being totally honest. Jean shopping routinely brings me to tears and leaves me frustrated. But this day, I realized my legs carried me five miles and they could have carried me five more if I asked them to.
My body is healthy and capable and strong and will go so much farther than my brain thinks it can. And I’m so happy this realization happened on this perfect morning in front of hundreds of strangers in the middle of a race I snuck into.
AAdventure Seeker 