Good plan, because you'll need Irish coffee to keep you warm in SF in July. On another thread I just committed to doing SF too -- my first marathon. I'm also going to enter the lottery for NYC (unfinished business for me -- I dns in 1991 with an injury, then took 15 years off running), but assuming I don't get that, I'd love to do SF as a first.

Race Day for me. Only 5K so nothing special. One of my goals this year is to run each race out of my comfort zone. We were warned before the race that there was ice on some stretches of the course. And they were right. I could feel my feet slip regularly on the ice. I was so worried I'd twist my knee or fall. There were stretches that literally had an ice sheet and you had to walk over it or slow down and run through the frozen lumpy and uneven grass along the path. There was a volunteer there who yelled ICE everytime a runner came even close. I was very careful and really slowed down when I even just suspected there might be ice. I was annoyed and disappointed, cause I wanted to run out of my comfort zone every race this year to see how slow I really was, and with all the icey patches and watching my footing all the time, I wasn't giving it all I had. I looked up the last 5K race I ran, back in 2004 (yes, it's been that long) and my best time back then was 35:35min. I ran an unofficial PR during a 10 mile race of 28:51min at the 5K mark in 2006. So today I officially PR'ed with 30:14 minutes but I know I used to be faster than that. I'm telling you now though, if the weather is like this for my next race, I'm skipping it.