goldenchild, please stop at the race report counter.  goldenchild ...race report counter.
		
		
	 
  
 Sorry for the late report!  I wanted to give a full detailed report and between Father's Day and my wife going into labor this morning at 4:30am and delivering at 3:30pm today... I've been super busy!
Here we go...
With this being my first organized run, I didn't know what to expect logistically.
Tossed and turned the night before (too excited, perhaps?).  Woke up at 5:15am and grubbed on a plain bagel loaded with peanut butter and got hydrated with H20.
Arrived at the venue by 6:40am and got a very light warmup in.  I found a few friends from my gym (1 also running the 5k and the other 2 running the 5mi) and hung with them at the start.
About 7-7:10 they started to corral us into our expected pace positions.  We stood around the sub8-sub9 minute area.
Lots. Of. Eye. Candy.  I tried to memorize bib numbers (where they wearing bibs?   

  )
I'm not sure what a good turn out looks like, but they announced that there were 1900+ participants between the 5k and 5mi runners.  Looked like a lot to me.  I was nervous because it looked like we were standing in the front 3rd of the pack and I thought I was being overzealous.
They made some announcements and then proceeded with having someone sing the national anthem.
The race starts and immediately go with the tunes... hit shuffle and the 1st song that pops up is Lenny Kravitz' Where Are We Running?   

  That got me juiced.
I remembered tri's write up of the course (  

  ) so I made an effort to stick with it.
I'm not sure if I kept too fast a pace at the beginning or if my nerves were getting to me, but there were a small handful of times that I just wanted to start walking (even within the first 1/4-1/2 mile!  When that happened I just slowed down just a hair and tried to get my mind off of focusing on it... telling myself it's just mental.
It seemed to work, though, because I never stopped jogging!
At around mile 2 there was a nice significant downhill that I enjoyed... but of course where there is a downhill portion there was an uphill that immediately followed.  I seriously thought about starting the walk of shame at this point.  What helped me was watching a 10-13 yo kid effortlessly take that hill as if he owned it.
Towards the end of the race, as we approached the bend into the stadium, I seriously mis-judged the point at which I was suppose to turn on the burners.  It wasn't until I was at the last 50 yards or so when I turned it on.  There were 2 guys that I could have come in before had I known.  Instead, it boiled down to me or this chick for that finish.  I was still at my pace when I felt/saw her pass me with 50 yards to go, so I downshifted and passed her pretty easily.  That's when she kicked it up and I felt her closing the gap fast.  There were about 25 more yards to go and that's when I just left it all out there.  I beat her   

  .
From that point, they cut off our timing chips and it was a walk around the perimeter of the stadium to pick up our race medals, race t-shirts, snap a pic, and then refuel with free oranges, bananas, yogurt with granola, and zico coconut water.
I hung around long enough to get the unofficial results and take some pics with my friends.
Unofficial:
100 overall (of 935), 14th in my age group of 66 participants (30-34) at 27:01
Then the official was telling everyone that the times are as much as 20 secs off because their posted info was based on the start clock (so it is only accurate for those at the front of the pack at the start).
Official:
101 overall (of 935), 14th in my age group at 26:37 (now my PR by default).
I am very happy with those results, considering how crappy my planning/preparation was leading up to the event.  The longest distance I ran in the 6 months of "training" I did was 1.5 miles.  I was pretty much just running 1-1.5miles after my weight training and calling that training for my 5k.  I would love to see how improved I could be using a lot of your guys' advice in this thread.
The SF full/half/10k/5k is coming up in September and everything but the half is sold out.  No way am I ready for a half.
I had such a blast participating in this event.  I will be looking for another one to run for sure in the near future.
I think I would like to focus on the 5k event to improve my PR before I get into anything longer.  By the way... the top finisher in the 5k ran 16:44   
 
I think I've written way more than you guys were interested in.  I may have even left out some stuff I shouldn't have.  Feel free to throw questions my way.
My next few days will be pretty busy with the new addition to the fam, but I'll check in when I get some free time.
Thanks to everyone in this thread that gave advice (both direct and indirectly).  This thread rocks.