Another Half Marathon for me!

Tara and I drove to San Antonio this past weekend so we could run the Inaugural Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon. It's always an adventure when we travel....

We had procrastinated in getting a hotel room (well, Tara did--she is always in charge of those things because she is so good at it!). So all we could get was a La Quinta WAAAAY on the north side of town. After we went to Expo and picked up our packets, we decided to drive to our hotel to check in before dinner. It is a newer hotel, so the GPS did not have the exact address, but it had something close to it, so we headed in that general direction. We were pretty sure we were on the right road, just not exactly sure where the hotel was! About 15 minutes into our drive, at 5:45 pm, we saw a sign that said "Freeway closed at the next exit, expect delays." They were right about the delay, it was horrendous. It was a parking lot! Tara called the hotel, at 5:58 pm, to see how far away we were, and they said that "on a good day" we had to drive 15 more minutes to get there on this road! Tara asked me if I thought we should cancel the reservation, and I said, without hesitation, "YES!". So she did, with 2 minutes to spare (we had to cancel by 6 pm). So there we were, the night before an inaugural marathon/half marathon with 30,000 entrants, with nowhere to stay (it was absolutely crazy!!). Suprisingly, I was not worried at all. As I said, Tara is very good at this stuff. She went online and started calling hotels, and we got a MAJOR blessing. She found a Comfort Inn Downtown, 2 full beds, free breakfast, 2 blocks from the shuttle stop that would take us to the start line! Wow, she did great!!

I was not as prepared for this race as I should have been, and even though Tara could run this distance in her sleep, she was so awesome to stay with me and get me through it. I had a personal record of almost 1 minute, and it was so much fun running with her! We have some great pics, which I will share after I order them.

Check-out at our hotel was 12:30 (that was considered late check-out!), and we did not even get back to the hotel until 12:45! Thankfully, they gave us until 2 pm. We hurried upstairs, took showers, packed , and were out by 2 pm, amazingly! We went to lunch at our favorite Mexican food restaurant La Margherita in Market Square. Then we met up with a friend of Tara's that also ran the half marathon, much faster than we did. We finally hit the road around 5:30 pm, and got home about 9 pm that night. Ten minutes after Tara left my house, I was in bed asleep. I was exhausted!

I learned a few things from this experience:
1. Book a hotel WAY in advance in the area that you want.
2. I need to train more consistently during the week, so I will be able to do it my sleep too!
3. Running with someone was SOOOO much more fun than running it alone. I want to get FASTER so I can run with Tara in all the races we are in together.
4. Never drive home from another city the same day as the race. It was exhausting and it seemed like we would never get home!
5. Never check your bag with your hotel key, your entire wallet, AND your car keys. (We had a panicked moment when they could not find my bag, that was a little scary!)
6. MOST IMPORTANTLY, bring toilet paper, the porta pottys WILL NOT have any! (A gracious man was handing it out at the start line, I was so thankful!!)

Next races:
January- Aramco Houston Half Marathon
February- AT&T Austin Half Marathon
March- Seabrook Lucky Trails?
April- Angie's half crazy, Clear Lake
May- Heels and Hills, Irving, TX

Wow, I better get training!!