Marine Corps Marathon Expo

I have to say, I am so glad I did Team in Training. I had the BEST time at the Marine Corps Marathon. I even had a lot of fun BEFORE the marathon.

Bill and I got to DC on Friday. I was so excited because this meant that I could take my time at the expo. I ALWAYS love the expos and look for things there like cute t-shirts (like the one I got in Chicago from One More Mile that says "Marathon Ho.") The thing that is different about the Marine Corps Marathon is, well, there are lots of marines around. In fact, they basically run the whole thing (not as in "running a marathon" but more like hosting). So it was kind of weird to have them shouting orders at you from the get-go. "MARATHONERS ON THE LEFT, 10K ON THE RIGHT!" And when I picked up my shirt, one was holding it up and said "THIS IS A SMALL T-SHIRT, PRESHRUNK COTTON!" I didn't know how to respond to that so I was like "Ok...thanks?" And he handed it to me and said "GOOD LUCK IN THE MARATHON MA'AM!" It was making me antsy, which Bill thought was hilarious.

Luckily, through the magic technology of texting, we ran into Gina, who had gotten there like an hour before us. She was at the Crocs stand which made me groan because anyone who knows me knows I LOATHE Crocs. I mean, I have gone into tirades about them. Granted, I have said, if any time was okay to wear Crocs it would be after a marathon. But I like Gina, so I just gave her a little grief over them ;)

I usually have a hard time not going crazy and buying everything at the expo, but I wasn't finding much :( UNTIL we found a booth called Tres Ladies. I was drawn in by the shirt that said "1 bottle of wine = 546 calories" with that crossed out and "5 miles" scrawled over the top. Cute. And totally what I was looking for. Until I turned around and saw one that was more appropriately me. It said "I run...(with the elipses as hearts)...because I love cupcakes." And even better? With each shirt purchase you got a cupcake.

We also got taste tests of GUs (I love the new High Octane Orange Vanilla. Best...GU...Ever), our blood pressure taken, free first aid kits with bandaids (including tiny tiny ones that are too tiny to fit on your pinky, for who knows what? Gina said they were for your Barbie), beer (for Bill only), Granola, oh and...

Well...

I DID forget my sandles. And I HAVE been looking for those sandles that they had in the 90s with those little massaging nubbies on them. And really, Gina's Crocs didn't really look like Crocs.

So mine are pink (of course) and brown and flipflops that DON'T look like Crocs.

Grrrr.

We spent 3 hours at the expo.

Then, the three of us grabbed pasta for dinner at this restaurant not too far from our hotel. We are FLOORED by the prices in DC by the way!!! We felt like we were actually saving money by going on vacation :)

Chicago Marathon Weekend: Saturday

Saturday was so hot! I (kind of) slept in, ate a huge breakfast at the hotel buffet (still fat-loading), and went for an easy 1-miler at 9:00 just to shake my leg-antsyness off. I'm glad that I did, because it ended up being a LOT hotter than I thought it was, so it kind of mentally prepared me for what I thought I would face on Sunday. Unfortunately, since we waited so long to book our hotel we were all the way out in Rosemont (by the O'Hare airport). So every time we wanted to go into Chicago it was an hour on the blueline. It wasn't THAT bad, but it did eat up a lot of our day.

We went to the expo, which was a lot of fun. They of course had every kind of energy bar known to man that they were handing out. I didn't actually eat anything there because I was being really good about not eating anything I didn't know about. I did however, try the Gatorade Endurance formula that they were going to have on the course, just to see if I would like it. YUCK! GROSS! No Gatorade on the course for me, just water.

When you got into the expo they had a huge video drive through of the course which was really cool. I was getting very excited.

I also found two new companies whose sportswear I loved! One was One More Mile . They had a bunch of funny shirts that said things like "Will Run for Beer", and "This IS my Race Pace", and "Chicago. Been there. Run That." Running Divas also had a lot of cute stuff including "marathongs" which I just thought was funny.

After the Expo, we already had to head out for our early dinner with Team CdLS at Lou Malnati's .

It was so fun to meet the team. They were all very very nice. Beth, the team captain, gave me a big hug when I got there. We had a very nice dinner and everyone introduced themselves. Even though we were a very small charity team (I think there ended up being 21 of us?) we were very very close to our $50,000 goal, and they think that more donations will be coming in. It was also nice to be on a team where everyone was really really passionate about the cause. If I end up doing Chicago next year I would definitely consider running for Team CdLS again!

After dinner I was exhausted. We headed back to Rosemont (with a little pit stop in the middle...come on, I drank like EIGHT glasses of water at dinner). Then I had a ton of pent up energy. My parents came back to our room to make signs and I was running around like a little kid showing them everything I got at the expo. I was SO PUMPED UP.

I did finally get to sleep though.

Impossible is Nothing (Part 1)

So this weekend, after an early Saturday run, I went to the London Marathon Expo. Then on Sunday I went over to watch the marathon. It was amazing!!!

The expo was a lot of fun and there were great deals on running gear (or as they call it here, your "kit"). As I got off of the train, there were all these ads with marathon tips sponsored by Nikeplus. The whole marathon was sponsored by adidas and the theme was "impossible is nothing"...when you walked in there was a wall that said "impossible is nothing" and you could sign your name, or a message. It was kind of neat to see how many people had signed it. (Check out the link there are some cool downloads there). The enormity of the whole expo made me realize how huge this event really was.

One thing that I thought was funny (maybe they do this at all marathon expos...I wouldn't know since this was my first one) was that they gave you a bag with all of the samples from sponsors at the END so that you didn't have to walk around with a bag collecting samples. There was even a can of beer included, which made me laugh!

They had like 15 different designs of T-shirts they were selling and I really couldn't help buying one, even though I felt kind of lame because I wasn't really running the marathon. But I figured I was kind of lame by going to the expo too, so I might as well.

Anyway, the whole thing was very exciting and is pumping me up to run the pig!