Kim and I in the back of the Ford Fusion Hybrid. |
Love Abby's look here. |
Once we were there, we headed out to the train (Love public transportation!) and we were off to the exp to pick up our bibs and swag.
Abby and Kim on the train. |
We had to have someone take our picture. |
The best part of riding the train is that you have time to take pictures. You also get to see a very interesting mix of people on the train. Sometimes you get to meet new people. There was a guy from New Orleans on the train back from the exp.
So after we hit the expo, had lunch, there was only one thing left to do while you are in Texas. We hit the Allen outlet mall. There were deals to be had. I picked up a new Coach purse for only $80!
We meet up with Tommy, Brian and Tommy's parents for dinner. Carrabba's for a little pre race carb loading, the Pasta Sostanza with whole wheat pasta was amazing. The food was good, and our waitress was very entertaining. I was asleep by about 10, because we were getting up at 5 am. Had a little breakfast and we headed to the train. It was free on Sunday for racers.
Again, what to do on the train for 45 minutes? Well take pictures, of course.
A shot of our shoes. |
Me with my Honor Bib and my new headband. |
When we got downtown, we were fortunate enough to find real bathrooms in the convention center to use instead of the portable ones. Apparently, it was not a big secret because there must have been about a 100 women in line. We also got to do a little stretching inside before we headed out to the starting line and took up a spot in our corral.
Waiting in the corral to start. |
We did see Brian at about mile 7, and handed off our jackets, which turned out to be a big mistake. This is our action shot that Brian took. That's Abby in the pink, and if you look real close you can see me behind the guy in the white.
I did get an action shot that actually doesn't make me look like a huge dork, which is usually the case when I run. Although I will not be ordering these pics because they are hugely expensive, it's nice to see that I did have a smile on my face during the race. This must have been really early on.
So it was a great race. I finished in 1:53, and made it in at 2:00:06 based on the gun time. We started with corral 5 so we were back a bit. I still can't imagine how I got here. Abby picked up her pace in the last half mile, but she was waiting on me at the finish line. A girl came up to us when we were waiting for our picture to let us know that she and her friend had followed us the whole time, they said they wanted to stick with the girls in pink. It's nice to know that we might have inspired someone.
Not a bad looking piece of hardware. |
Me and Kim trying to be warm on the train. |
After the five of us all meet back up, we made the trek to the train station. This was the most painful part of my day. By then I was so cold, and my quads were killing me. Kim was in the same boat. We kept having to stop to stretch, while Abby and Brian power walked it to the train. Abby is ten years younger than me. The freezing didn't stop when we got to the train station, we took a bus to the train, and had to wait a little bit, and then we had to switch trains. We were lucky enough to switch trains underground, but it was still darn cold. Then Kim had to pee again. But that's nothing out of the ordinary.
It was a great race, and now I am hoping to check out the Chicago Rock n Roll, and then there's always Vegas in December (fingers crossed).
***It appears that I have no pictures of Tommy to post. Not sure how that happened, but he was with us and he did awesome!***