The Art of Marathon Stalking...

I was very excited to head to KC this weekend to cheer on some if my favorite running peeps as they ran the KC marathon. Maybe this race should be called Hills From Hell. I'm not kidding, and I didn't even have to run them. 

Anyway, it turned out that the hotel Kara's husband Chris booked for us was right smack in the center of this figure 8 shaped race. Front desk people, not so nice; bartender that gave me a free glass of mixed to order chocolate milk, super awesome. 

I digress. 

Kara and Rochelle got up and got ready and, yes Virginia there were pre race pictures. 

Kara & Rochelle

If you aren't making your own arm warmers then you are crazy. Knee socks. Look into it. 

They cabbed it to the start and I got myself ready to head to mile 7 for the first of my marathon stalking. 

Rochelle at mile 7.

I didn't get a picture of Kara and Lauren at 7 because they saw me before I saw them. I also missed Carrie.  I don't have a good excuse as to why. 

Mile 10-ish...

Lauren & Kara

It was nice to be in the sun, it was a chilly morning for race spectating. After Rochelle came through here I ran over to mile 12. Did I mention I was wearing Uggs and had on a scarf and was carrying my purse?  I'm sure I looked fabulous. 

Lauren & Kara

Carrie in her fabulous, plaid Lululemon shorts with her sister.

And Rochelle headed up this insane hill. It looked like it went on forever. I stayed at the bottom.

I decided it was time for food, hydration and a little thawing out. 

Yes, there is a Starbucks on every corner. If you haven't had their spinach, feta, egg white wrap you are missing out. 

Then it was time for my big marathon stalking failure. I had too much time to ponder the map and decided to try to hit up mile 22 instead of mile 19.5. I misjudged how far away 22 would be and by the time I changed my mind and headed back to my original destination the 4 hour pace group was running by. 

Talk about a major bummer. If the text messaging race tracking had been working, I hadn't gotten an update since the 5k, I would have known that Rochelle was struggling and had not passed by yet. Thanks to the failures of technology I ended up walking away with my head down. 

Oh well, you can't win them all. I headed back to the hotel to wait anxiously for the girls to get back, our hotel refused to give us a late checkout. They got back about 11:45 and we were back on the road by 12:30. So I'd say we did get a late checkout. 

We made great time coming home. Without snow, the Kansas landscape looked very different. 

Yes, this happened. 

We did almost get killed by what I can only assume was a van of drunk OSU fans after we got back into Oklahome. Thanks to my catl-like driving reflexes, and the fact there was no one in the lane next to us, we managed to survive. 

We made it back to Norman and this happened. 

What a great, but very short trip to Kansas. I didn't even run and I was exhausted. 

Race Weekend, Along For The Ride...

PBefore my appendix decided to create another speed bump for me this year, I had been planning to run the Kansas City half marathon. Because some of my favorite running friends were running the full, I decided to tag along for a weekend centered around running and friends. These are a few of my favorite things.

Kara and Rochelle and I hit the road yesterday and headed to KC. Would you believe it snowed on the way?  It snowed ALOT. 

We made it to the expo and Kara and Rochelle picked up their race packets. We also meet some very nice girls from the Athleta store. 

We headed to Cool Vines for dinner, and some pictures. 

That was Kara's pizza. We actually got pictures of us, not just the food but it appears to not be on my phone. 

We were staying at the Intercontinental. 

Turns out to be the perfect location for spectating. We are right smack in the middle of the race course. 

More on that later.