The Fifth Annual Nike Women’s Marathon, benefiting leukemia and lymphoma research, was more than a run to SF State sophomore Paloma Dudum-Maya.

She was there to run for her dad, who is a cancer survivor.

Dudum-Maya, who ran the 13.1-mile half-marathon course, said the fundraising helped motivate her along with her general love of running.

The Nike event has become so popular that only 20,000 runners could register for the race.

“I’ve always wanted to do it, but it’s really hard to get in,” said Dudum-Maya, who finally got her number through the training program run by Nike and the charitable organization Team in Training. The organization raises money for and is run by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Team in Training has worked closely with Nike on all five of the women’s marathons held thus far and has raised more than $80 million since the event began in 2004, including $18 million at this year’s event alone.

This aspect of the race is one of the many reasons all these runners participate.

There is another reason why these women come together for a treacherous half-marathon or the full 26.2-mile marathon, and that’s to run like a girl.

The “Run Like a Girl,” slogan brought women to participate in this run through San Francisco on Oct. 19. Despite the name and slogan, 1,089 of the runners were men.

At 7 a.m. the starting gun was fired and spectators began cheering.

More than 20 minutes later, every runner had set off on the course, Union Square had emptied, and the sun continued rising over the waves of people now streaming through the city.

“It’s a great and thrilling thing to be a part of,” said Jodi Dailey, an account manager for On Board Entertainment, the company hired by Nike to organize both the marathon and the 15-week training program for runners leading up to the event.

“The mission is to get women involved in the sport of running and to get women supported in something they maybe didn’t think they could accomplish such as a half-marathon or a full marathon,” said Dailey, who is also an SF State alumna and former All-American for the SF State cross country team.

“Nike’s very supportive and I hear over and over again [that] so many women would not be able to do something like this if it weren’t for Nike.”

According to Dailey, runners from 25 countries and all 50 states took part in Sunday’s run and there was even a marriage proposal at the finish line.

Anne Thilges, a lecturer on anatomy and physiology at SF State and the former coach of the running club, has competed in three of the past Nike Women’s Marathons.

She took this year off to train for an ultra marathon, which is a race of 50 to 100 miles or more.

“Every course is unique, every course is difficult just because of the distance,” Thilges said of the Nike race.

The course winds from Union Square down to the Embarcadero where it follows the coast line all the way around the Peninsula, past sights such as Fisherman’s Wharf, the Presidio, and along the Great Highway. Then it goes into the ocean-facing side of Golden Gate Park before returning to the finish line back on the Great Highway.

That is the end of the half-marathon, but the full marathon runners pass the finish line and keep running south around Lake Merced and past the SF State campus before returning back up the Great Highway to the finish line.

“That’s a real lonely part of the course,” Thilges said.

“[The runners] go through the park and that’s where the half-marathoners finish. The full marathoners continue on out of Golden Gate Park, out to Lake Merced, around the lake and back to the finish.

“They come close to the finish [and] it’s kind of like smelling the barn; they’re only halfway but come real close to the finish and that can play mental tricks on them. [The lake] is a very lonely part of the course and that’s certainly tougher than the hills,” she said.

Among the five percent of male runners was Albert Mendoza, a kinesiology grad student at SF State and teacher of the jogging class at SF State. Mendoza is also a member of the Kinesiology Graduate Association at the university, which volunteers work at events such as the Nike Women’s Marathon.

“Running hurts,” said Mendoza, who ran the half-marathon.

“Pain doesn’t have a gender. I like to see what I’m made of and that’s what’s motivating me to do [the run]. That and the fact that you’re running with other people who are going through the same pain and they’re doing it. If you run, it’s [something] you’d understand—it’s a whole culture.”

At the finish line were photographers to make every runner feel like they were first. Runners were greeted with firemen in tuxedos handing out Tiffany’s necklaces.

“It was hard, challenging, but overall a good experience,” said Dudum-Maya, who placed 10th in her age group of 18 to 19-year-old women in the half marathon.

“I like running on Sunday mornings, it’s peaceful. It’s nice to get the support from all the people in the city looking out their windows,” she said while looking out across the beach to the Pacific Ocean.

“It was really fun, too. I enjoy running.”