Twin Cities Race Weekend

Friday around lunch time, Toni was off work so I went to pick her up and head to the cities! A pre-road trip car wash and selfie felt necessary at the time.

The drive there felt like it flew by. I think we had two bathroom stops, and we were there. Whoa. We arrived at our hotel and received this visual reminder of just how close we were to the finish line. yessssssss!!

Our hotel has a shuttle to take you within a few miles of the hotel for food/shopping/whatever, but we opted to walk to dinner since we'd spent a few hours in the car. On the way to our dinner destination, I found FALL!.

St. Paul is so adorable, I can't even handle it. I was starving, so I only let myself stop every once in awhile for photos.

We tried to eat at the Red Cow, but they were at an hour wait. Kyle and I ate there after the Monster Dash Half and it was GOOD. We wondered up the road, and The Happy Gnome had immediate seating, but only outdoors, on their super adorable patio, on a gorgeous fall night. Uh.... yes.

Toni and I couldn't decide on our meals, so like good travel partners, we split two: a burger and a veggie/cheesy melty sandwich. So freaking good.

Also, a beer, obviously. 

Saturday morning, we woke up fairly early to head out on our shake out run. The plan was to run 3 miles, ending at a coffee/breakfast place near our hotel and walk back after eating and retrieving breakfast. Except I somehow picked a breakfast place in a hotel, and we had to walk quite a ways to find a caribou. Just what you want the day before your race: unplanned time on your feet. Oops!

We headed back to our hotel and headed out to the expo. We were about a third of a mile from the expo so we walked there as well. Despite bringing all the monies to spend at the race expo, I walked out having only purchased GUs (several toasted marshmallow), and a TCM pint glass. There were some really cute things at Mill City Running but nothing in my size. Bummer.

We stayed close to the expo for lunch and had a decent meal.

Then we headed back to the hotel for some r&r, including a nap. Traveling with Toni is my favorite. Mid-day nap? Yes please. 

When we woke up, it was time to head to dinner. I love that this race weekend was all about food and running, because those are two of my favorite things! We took a ride this time, to Pizza Luce and again split a couple of pizzas. I still have dreams about this mashed potato pizza. It tastes like happiness.

After the race, I grabbed a beer, we showered up and headed back outside into the rain to cheer on all of our running friends!! Such a great race weekend, and I can't wait for next year when it's our turn to tackle 26.2! eeps!

Twin Cities 10 Lottery Results

Last spring, it was decided that Toni and I would enter the lottery for the Twin Cities 10 mile. We're both doing the Twin Cities Marathon in 2018 (my first in 4 years, her first EVER) and I thought it would be really cool to do the 10 mile the year prior, both to get to experience the excitement of the race, cheer on all our SFWR friends doing the full, and also get a reminder of what the last 8 miles of the marathon are, because they're some challenging miles!

It was decided. I took vacation time from work, I booked us a super expensive hotel at the finish line that has a shuttle to the race start. So then we waited until July 7. And waited. And waited. All along, just knowing and expecting to get in.

Finally the last day for lottery registrations was upon us, so the next morning I woke up checked my email and credit card report expecting to see a race fee/race confirmation and didn't see either. What? I looked closer at the website, and realized that lottery entries wouldn't be determined until Wednesday, the following day. Ugh.

Wednesday morning Toni and I were up super early to run. As soon as I got home, I again pulled up my email and credit card report expecting to see good news. Nope. Hmmm.... I had story times all morning at work, so I had Toni checking her email and texting me to alert me with good news. Nothing.

We have a group Facebook page for our running group, and a few of our friends started to post the they were in. Uh... nothing yet here. Shit. The email instructions said that the lotteries were being drawn on a rolling schedule that could take up to 8 hours, so I didn't panic.

Yet.

I worked a partial day on Wednesday because I was scheduled to work the weekend, and got in a glorious nap as I'd been getting up in the 4's most of the week to run. I woke up around 5:30pm and was devastated not to see an email. STILL. BUT there also wasn't a sorry to inform you email either, so there's still hope, right?

Around this time I started stalking all of the Medtronic TC 10 event posts on Facebook, and it appeared that many many other people still hadn't heard anything and their appeared to be some technical issues of people getting an email that they didn't get in, and then one that they did get in, groups of people who signed up as a team where some of them had heard they were in and others nothing. This all calmed my nerves slightly, but I still started looking closer at the Crazy Horse half, our back up plan, as well as lodging in the area.

I went to teach yoga, checked my email before, and immediately after class, and still nothing. At 8:06pm (class ends at 8pm) Toni called me. "Check your email!" Huh... I just had. "We got in!" I made her forward me the email as proof, as I still didn't have anything, and sure enough, an hour later I got my email too!

I'm so excited to take the shortcut to the capital in October! Because only crazy people would've put in 50 miles of training for a race that they're not even officially "in" for, right?

Twin Cities 10 Mile Lottery

My running buddy, Toni and I signed up for the Twin Cities 10 Mile lottery last weekend. It's open for 10 days before participants are selected. I ran the race in 2010 and desperately would like to run it again this year since I'm planning to run the TCM full in 2018 (eeps!) We registered as a team so we'll either get in together or not.

I have a room booked at the finish line that has a shuttle to the start for roughly a million dollars a night, so that'll be fun and not break the bank at all. There are a few other Sioux Falls lady runners who are applying for the lottery as well, so hopefully we can have a full room to cut down the cost a bit.

A few of my runner friends were talking about the Crazy Horse Half Marathon the following weekend, so we decided that will be our back up plan if TC10 doesn't work out.

Cross your fingers for us please!!

Also, it's totally our one year runnerfriendivarsary today, so yay us! Thanks for being my BRF Toni! You've made the last year of running way more fun than it has been in a really long time!