At the top of my 20 best marathons list, this marathon features the best of New York City with lots of cheering, and handing out of bananas, pretzels, tissues, wet paper towels and anything else you may need, from New Yorkers of all ages in every borough.

In addition to the amazing crowd support, the city is washed in the most beautiful fall colors!

This was my first marathon, a little hilly for a starter marathon, but an incredibly amazing experience!

Some of the highlights were running down Fisherman's Warf, climbing up to Golden Gate Bridge Park, the bridge just visible under the fog, the Pacific Ocean.

At the finish a red carpet is layed out where handsome guys in tuxedos present each finisher with a Tiffany necklace.

For my 30th birthday I invited a bunch of friends, we started outside my front door, plotted our own course and ran 30 miles.

I got to take them through a tour of all my favorite running spots in the city while we shared stories from the past 30 years.

They each chose the distance they wanted to run, when they weren't running they were driving along the course cheering, carting snacks and calling attention to our race. I have no doubt some day it will be the thing to do! ;-)

I have signed up to run this in July of 2011. You have 24 hours to run an 8.4 mile loop in Philadelphia as many times as you can. I paced for a friend of mine last year and the best thing about this race was the camp-ground where everyone hung out when they weren't running. You can bring friends to pace you after the first 4 loops, or you can get a bunch of your crazy ultra running friends and all do it together.

As I napped in the wee hours of the morning between pacing loops for my friend, it was so fun to listen to the group of runners in the next tent sitting around talking and drinking and then saying together, "Should we run another loop together." And somebody else would say, "Oh sure, why not?" Can't wait to do this myself!

Not quite a marathon but a team of 6-12 people together runs around 200 miles in some of the most beautiful areas in the country.

You pick your own team and spend two days of running with your favorite people. Doing my first of these in PA in Oct '11 with 11 other running moms and hope to do many more!