I took a vacation day yesterday and it was nice.  I slept in, met some friends for lunch and finally followed through on some errands.   Who has time for the dry cleaners anyways?  I spent most of yesterday pretty relaxed so I am not sure why I slept so crappy last night.  😦  Maybe the nerves were starting to kick in?

Once I finally managed to make myself move this morning, I got ready and headed for SLO.  My mother and I were planning on lunch before heading to the expo.   It was super yummy.

Parking was fairly quick and painless.    From there it was just a short walk to the expo.   While it may have been small by some it was the largest that I have been too.   It also had the most vendor’s.   The vendor’s were local shops and bakeries or other races.  

Packet pick up was fairly easy, and then it was off to pick up my shirt.  This was the only awkward bit, the shirts were being distributed on the other side of the tent, through the crowds of people shopping.    It wasn’t a huge thing at all, just seemed awkward.  The shirts varied by race.  Full marathon shirts were an orange color and long sleeves.  The half shirt was blue and long sleeved and the 5K was pink and short sleeved.  All were technical shirts.

From there it was shopping time.  I came prepared with money and plastic but didn’t really have anything I needed to buy.    Famous last words.  The trouble spots were the booths for LeftLane Sports and Left Coast Shirts.    Leftlanesports.com is an online sports stores that offers things at pretty awesome discounts.  Plus when I have ordered from them, the shipping was awesome fast.   If you haven’t checked them out you should.    I left that booth with a new pair of compression socks and arm sleeves.    Left Coast put a serious dent in my pocket.  Everything was just so cute!  I could have spent much more.   I picked up a shirt and sweatshirt for me and an early Mother’s Day gift for my mother.    I actually left without buying myself the sweatshirt but ended up going back for it after the meet and greet.

After that all the shopping, there was still time before the scheduled meet up.  So we headed to the car to leave everything there and get out of the wind a bit. This area has been having some freaky strong winds lately.  My work town got up to 54 mph gusts the other day.  Luckily the weather reports says that wind should be calm for the race tomorrow.  Fingers crossed!

The meet and greet was great.  I had the chance to meet most of the other ambassadors.  It is a great group of people.   We hung out and talked and met some other people.  The SLO Marathon has a challenged athletes team.  We also met a person who traveled all the way from Australia for the race and a former local who will be completing his 100th marathon at the race tomorrow.  100!!!!   I won’t lie the jacket was pretty awesome too 🙂  The only thing that threw me was the interview.   I’m horrible on tv!  My voice sounds so funny.  Even my mother remarked that it sounded odd after she played back what she had recorded as well.

We headed out after the meet and greet.  We took some time to drive a portion of the course.  Oh my, that’s a long slow climb right at the start.  Mile 1-4 is all incline, maybe I should have just been surprised!   It ends with a small downhill, so yay for that!  I felt like we drove too far and looking at the map again tonight, we did.   So woo hoo for that!    Then it was time for a little carb loading before heading home.

My gear is all laid out for tomorrow and by bag is ready to go.   The plan is to be dropped off about 1/4 mile from the start line.   I thought about changing the planned outfit to match my new socks but chose to stick with the original.

And now it’s off to bed for me and hopefully better sleep than last night!!

How was your Saturday?

 

 

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