A day of debacles

 Ummm the weather has massively dropped from the forecast when I packed and now I am running in 35 degree weather in a tshirt and running skirt. A little bit of freaking out here.

So, nothing actually terrible happened and I am as prepared as I'll ever be for my race. But there was some seriously craziness going on getting to that point.Here's what happened:

Debacle #1

1. It took us 7 hours to drive like 250 miles to Virginia Beach. Ya....traveling on Friday evenings is not the smartest plan. On the bright side my pizza was even better the next day.
2. Got into the hotel room, lost the key in about 45 seconds. We honestly couldn't find it for at least 10 minutes.

This is the kind of stuff we do in hotels.
Could have contributed to the lost key.
3. Went to lay out my clothes to cheer Eric, Nicole, and Emma on at their 8K (btw, that's 5 miles) this morning.
  This is for you, Paula.
WARNING - stop reading if you are a male who is related to me.
Turns out I packed my underwear that I planned to race in...and that's it. No other underwear. I remembered to bring 47 shamrock temporary tattoos, but not underwear.
4. Arrived at the 8K - apparently 8,500 people were running it? I have been to races that big, but not that were only spread out over 5 miles! But literally as we took a look at the first parking lot we drove past, we saw Nicole, Mike, Emma & Josh. The opposite of a debacle.

5. This will be a long number. I realized I left my sign in the car, and was devastated. I decided to go back after the race started to get it.


 Admit it, you would have gone back for that sign too.
They were planning on 12 minute miles, so that gave me 36 minutes to get it before seeing them at mile 3. Easy. Eric told me where the car was parked, because I don't pay attention to details like that. Side note - Eric was distracted focused on the race and the place he told me was NO WHERE near where the car was, and actually didn't even really exist. Cut to me sprinting all over Virginia Beach trying to find the car, then sprinting with a sign back to the race. Remember how I was supposed to take it easy and stay off my feet today?
6. I made it to mile 3 and set up shop. I got there 26 minutes after they started, so unless they went from 12 minute miles to sub 9, I was going to see them. I even made a friend to hold up the sign while I took their picture.
7. Everyone stood in dead silence and stared at me like I was a weirdo for my crazy cheering and screaming encouragement to the runners - um, I hope these people leave their bad attitudes at home tomorrow. I even told them to start cheering because the runners needed our support and they ignored me.
8. 45 minutes after they started I thought I must have somehow missed them, and headed to the finish to see them there. Really lame crowd "support" there too.
9. Mike called me to tell me I had just missed them. Turns out what I thought was mile 3 on the map was actually mile 4, which may be related to my problem finding the car we had just walked from.
10. It took us 45 minutes to find them after they finished - at least we knew to pick a specific point to meet at tomorrow!

Debacle #2

Long story short, Eric and I had to stay in different hotels Friday and Saturday night, which left us hanging out at Starbucks in between check out and check in (trying to stay off my feet!). Lily texted me at 3pm to say she was about 2 hours away. Um, huge problem, the expo closes at 5, and there is no race day pickup, aka she just trained for 3 months, paid $100, and drove for 5 hours to not race. We needed a copy of her license to pick up her packet. They ended up pulling over at a Kinkos to fax us a copy of their licenses at Office Max, and we rushed back to the expo to forge their signatures and get their packets. CRISIS AVERTED.
Here we are at the expo the first time.

Good news

 1. I saw the 8K runners at the finish and they did AMAZING!


  There they go!
Their time goal was under an hour. They all ran together and Eric's official time was 58:57, about 6 minutes off his previous 5 mile time. I was super proud of them and had so much fun cheering for all the other runners. Mike thought it was weird that I was yelling everyone's name I could see from their bibs to encourage them....I told him to just wait until he runs the half tomorrow to see why.
2. My bib has my name on it - this is a long time dream finally come true. Now it's on my bib, the front and the back of my shirt. I'm not narcissistic or anything.

3. There was a Ross next to our hotel which solved my underwear debacle, and also my what do I wear tomorrow night debacle.
4. I'm a sucker at expos but how awesome is this? It has a little body glide (no vaseline on course = panic attack over chafing), my inhalor, chapstick, advil, and holds my bib!

That pretty much sums up our night after all the excitement. I did some yoga for runners, laid out my gear
(it's a lot)
and now I am about to take a shower and go to bed. My stomach is churning (not from the beans) and I'm so nervous/excited! It will be one of those nights where I wake up a million time (partially because I've been hydrating my ass off) and hope it's morning, much like a 6 year old on Christmas eve.

OH MY GOD I'm running 26.2 in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I demand everybody think of me and send me good vibes when they wake up. Just kidding. Sort of. Everyone have a wonderful Sunday!