Evie Clercx
Bib No: 28 Pace: 8:43
Age: 33
Sex/Category: F
Division Place: 5 out of 13
Gender Place: 14 out of 68
Overall Place: 58 out of 203
I can't believe I ran a marathon! It is surreal. I did it. My finishing time was 3:47, so just a bit slower than what I wanted to finish in. I am okay with that, though. Let me give you a quick recap of the events:
Friday afternoon my friend Karen, who ran the half, picked me up at my house. She offered to drive since Jayme and I were both running the full and weren't sure our legs could handle the drive home.
Then, it was off to get Jayme and get on our way. The race is two hours away from where we live, but we wanted to get there in time to pick up our packets and eat a nice pasta dinner.
Here we are picking up our packets! Except, this was the wrong building. Silly us. We finally found the correct place to go and picked our stuff up. This race had disposable racing chips, so that was kind of a cool switch. I don't know about you, but I get nervous about losing my chip mid-race. I don't want to have to pay $30 or whatever just because my chip fell off, and I don't want to have my race not count because I didn't turn my chip in.
Next stop...dinner! We were all starving by this time, so we went to a restaurant called BraVo's for some pasta. We got a coupon for a discount on a pasta dinner in our race bags, so that pretty much decided it for us. Since the weather was beautiful, we decided to sit outside for dinner. Although the weather was nice, the service was not the best. We sat there FOREVER before someone waited on us. As a former waitress, I am pretty sympathetic to all servers, as I know first hand how difficult the job can be. But it wasn't even all that busy, so I kind of think we got sat and everyone just forgot about us. Oh well...I had spaghetti and meatballs, and it was really yummy. They also served bread and garlic dipping oil, and the three of us polished off two loaves. It was yummy. Is that a glass of wine in front of me, you ask? Yes, it certainly was. I was really debating about drinking it since it was the night before my race, but decided it would be okay, since in training I always had a beer or something the night before my long runs and I did fine. It also kind of calmed my nerves. It was so good, I had two glasses (whoops).
After dinner we decided to head back to the hotel and get ready for bed. We would have to get up at 4am in order to get dressed and breakfast eaten in time, and by this time it was close to 9pm. Although I brought a few options for running, I ultimately decided on my pink fila shirt and nike shorts. I didn't want to take my fuel belt but needed something to hold my GU, and my fila shirt has pockets.
After setting four alarms (three phone and one wake-up call), we were off to bed for the night. We had a room at the Holiday Inn Express, and they had the most comfortable beds in the world. I would like to go on vacation and just sleep in one of those beds! That became the joke of the trip for us. "Are you a runner?" "No, but I stayed in a Holiday Inn last night." I kind of get the joke now.
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