Austin Recap, Part One

ell, I am not sure if you thought I might have died or been captured by aliens but I am back.  To spoil the story right off the bat, I survived my cold and made it to Austin and even finished the race.  The story is long so I am going to split it into two parts, one tonight and the other tomorrow.  Lets start!

Last week, I had that dreaded cold and was feeling pretty stressed and worried about the upcoming marathon in Austin. I took the advise that you shared with me and vitamined up and gradually felt better. The crummy thing was I only ran a few miles early in the week and by the time it got to getting to Austin, I felt really unprepared. I know its probably idiotic, but even though I busted my butt all winter running that I had screwed everything up the two weeks before the marathon. 

Lindsey, Cara, and I flew into Austin on Saturday with relatively few complications, especially considering that Dallas had gotten a foot of snow that night. My friend Rachel picked us up at the airport and dropped us off at the Holiday Inn Round Lake in Austin. Cara found this hotel and it was super nice because it was just a mile from S. Congress, the Expocenter and the marathon starting point. After dropping our bags off we took a shuttle to the expo to retrieve our chips, numbers, and to browse the wares. 

The expo was pretty large and had the usual vendors. We first went and got our numbers and chips. One of the give-aways to the runners was this cool bag:

and the best part:

The bag is designed for runners so there is a pouch for your shoes and all sorts of running gear. We took in some of the freebies and Cara and Lindsey went off to seek some of the good deals. I was not looking for anything in particular since I found the stuff I really needed in the past couple of weeks.



After the expo we headed out and took a look at the race Start/Finish and then grabbed some lunch and back to the Hotel room. We were all pretty tired by this point so we took a nap for a bit. By this point, I was getting antsy and knew I needed to go out and get a run in (the fear of not running much all week infiltrated my dreams). I was not prepared for the warmth of Austin so I overdressed for the run (it was 60 degrees but my phone said 39). Lindsey and I went out for a run just short of two miles.


It calmed me a bit and helped get some of the stiffness and cramps out of my legs. After a shower we got a taxi and went out to dinner. We had planned eating the traditional dinner of pasta but the restaurant we had planned on going to was PACKED so we walked down to another restaurant down the road.

Next morning we got up at 5 am and showered and prepared for the marathon. It was Lindsey’s birthday so we wished her a very Happy Birthday and Happy Valentines as well! It is always so hard to figure out what the heck to wear for a marathon. It was cold in the morning and the sun was not up yet so it was important to be warm but I did not want to be dressed like I did the day before for my short jog. I settled on my Saucony short shorts and tank top with my EMS bergelene top. I figured I could take off the top if I got too warm. We took a shuttle to the starting point. Here are a couple pictures of the pre-race.

Walking towards the starting line

The start line



Finding an open portapotty


Looking a bit nervous before the race

The plan was that we were all going to try to stay together for the first few miles and then depending how we were feeling break out from there. We lined up with the 9:00 minute pace group figuring we would move up. The gun went off, complete with fireworks, and we all started moving up.

More tomorrow!