Marathon Eve and How to Receive Updates

This is going to be a quick overview of my day. I’m blogging from bed and need to start winding down. It’s after 10 p.m. and my 5 a.m. wake up call will come early tomorrow!

First up…for those of you who want to track my progress during the race (HI MOM! Love you!), you have a couple options. First, Brandon will be Tweeting updates from my account. Hopefully, he’ll be posting my splits and updates on how I’m feeling. You do not have to sign up for Twitter to see my page. Here is the link.

Second, you should be able to enter my bib number and see my splits on the Marine Corps Marathon website. My bib number is 28388. They don’t have the tracking up yet so I can’t give you good instructions but I think it might all be accessible here. Not sure though!

Moving along…

I was able to sleep until about 7:30 this morning so I ended up getting a little over eight hours of sleep. I was pleased with that and felt rested when I woke up. I also felt like going for a run (obviously I didn’t) so I took that as a good sign! We checked out of our hotel in Richmond and hit the road for DC!

We stopped at Starbucks for breakfast and I think the staff thought I was crazy for walking in with a jar of peanut butter and a banana.

I ordered oatmeal and added banana, dried fruit, a little bit of brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and peanut butter. It was passable but I just do not like the texture of instant oats.

It was a quick two-hour trip to DC from Richmond. I was SO excited as we were pulling into Crystal City and checking into our hotel. Between the marathon and the Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Insanity, the city is buzzing with activity.

We hopped on the Metro and headed into DC for packet pickup. We grabbed lunch at a deli before we went into the convention center.

I had a veggie panini on sourdough and sweet potato chips. It was pretty average but got the job done.

Then it was expo time!

First stop, picking up my bib.

Am I really doing this?

YES!

Then we grabbed my shirt and packet and browsed the booths. Brandon was so happy to be there! 😉

I swung by to visit Oprah and gave her a piece of my mind.

The wax museum brought Oprah so that people could take pictures. Oprah ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 2004 in 4:39:15. I told her that I sure hoped I would beat her! 😉

It was a very, very crowded Metro ride back to Crystal City. The Metro was crazy with rally traffic.

We were excited to discover that the DC Bulldog Club watches all the games just a few blocks from our hotel and stopped in to watch the Georgia/Florida game this afternoon.

My game day beverages of choice were a little nontraditional…

A liter of water and 16 ounces of coconut water. I drank ALL of this over the course of the game. Sadly, the Dawgs lost in overtime but they played hard and looked good out there.

We had dinner at a pizza place near our hotel that received great reviews online. We started with a Greek salad.

And then shared a pizza for dinner.

Tomato sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, parmesan and arugula. The crust was think and crispy and the pizza wasn’t greasy at all. Yum!

All of my gear is ready to go…

And I’m off to bed! Next time I talk to you guys, I’ll have 26.2 behind me!!!!!!