My wife and I took a 10^th wedding anniversary trip to San Francisco last week and it seemed like a good opportunity to bring along a friend on my run…

As part of my fundraising for Team Up for next year’s inaugural Dopey Challenge I have set up a virtual 5K. As part of the fun I have been asking participants to take along Dopey on their run/walk. So in addition to earning the cool looking medal the best pictures will be eligible for one of the prizes that were generously donated from some of my favorite vendors. Although I am not eligible for the prizes I wanted to participate in my own event as I wanted to be part of the fun.

As this was our first trip to San Francisco we wanted to cover as much ground as possible and really the best way to visit a place is to do so on foot. We just happened to do it in running sneakers. Although we ran pretty much the same route from Union Square along Market Street then along the Embarcadero (it’s not easy to find flat areas to run in San Francisco) we took to this streets for 3 runs in addition to the Half Marathon. We did actually take a day off from running…but we hiked in Muir Woods National Park instead.

As you can see from the Garmin maps below we pretty much followed the same route on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday. Just a little different distance and pace on each.

Friday’s ‘Dopey’ run

Saturday’s run

Tuesday’s run – our last hurrah before heading to the airport

Here are a few highlights of the running the virtual 5K with Dopey (camera credits to my wife 🙂 without whom it would probably have been a single ‘selfie’ with Dopey).

Heading out for my run

Hey, look! A cable car

Is he still behind me?

At the Exploratarium

We cannot run to Alcatraz

Dopey hanging on tight

Just being Dopey

There’s still a chance to sign up for the event. It runs through July 31^st. Check out the event and the prizes on offer.

I will be writing a separate post on the Half Marathon.