On Friday, Mike and I made the incredibly damp journey from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. From sunrise to sundown and then some, it was raining the entire day - not ideal. I'd been watching the forecast like it was my job, and I was pretty sure that it would rain itself out by Saturday morning, but the threat continued to loom like those very persistent rainclouds.
We split the food-picking duties, and Mike was up first, so we made our lunch stop in Harrisburg to visit The Harrisburger. It turned out to be located in a neat public market type setup that was full of people on their lunch breaks. Some of the other stalls were tempting, but we stuck to the original plan. Since I was planning on eating at/over maintenance for a few days anyway, I didn't worry about it too much and was incredibly pleased when this came out:
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| The Van Helsing - smashed roasted garlic, garlic aioli, and a giant puddle of melted brie. I smashed my fries onto it in true Pittsburgh fashion. |
We also perused a second market building that had produce stands, meat and deli cases, lots of tempting baked goods, and some really tasty buttery salty pretzels (we split one), then splashed back to the car and got back on the road for the remainder of our road trip. Traffic was predictably difficult for the last 10 miles, which felt like they took about as long as the rest of the journey. Eventually we got to the garage where I'd made a reservation (thanks, Parking Panda!) and headed to the race expo!
It took me a couple minutes to re-familiarize myself with the Philly grid (after visiting last fall, which is when I decided it would be nice to run a race there) and then we were off to the Broad and Race entrance of the convention center. A race volunteer handed us a couple of dark chocolate squares when we walked in; the expo wasn't huge but it covered the bases.
First order of business was, of course, bibs! They had a pretty efficient system here, attaching a sticker to a bib as you checked in, instead of having everything pre-assigned and having to search for it. Mine confirmed my assigned preferred corral (M - it had been L earlier in the week but maybe more people got added?), which I was placed into for an 11:00 pace. I'd been icing my knee regularly since Thursday and was feeling more but not completely confident, so I wasn't sure if that would end up being the right corral for me, but I was going to give it my best shot.
After bibs, we paused for an obligatory silly inflatable photo, where someone offered to take our picture:
And we had to do a selfie at this other one after picking up our goodie bags - you can really see how drenched Mike is in this one...
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| Bonus creepy marshmallow guy eyes |
The goodie bags contained our race jackets (yay - finally something other than a t-shirt!) but there were signs all over that said not to open your bags and to go to the try-on area to check fit. I wasn't 100% sure if the Medium I'd selected would be right, so I did take advantage of that booth and was pleased to find that the sample jacket they had for me to try on fit perfectly. This was a really cool feature that I appreciated even though I didn't end up needing to switch. I did peek into my own bag to confirm that the visor I was supposed to get (through using a promo code during registration) was there also.
We swung by the area where they were giving away tiny cups of hot chocolate as well as vanilla cookies and chocolate dip - these guys were so slammed! I made sure to thank them, I'm sure it was a huge hassle to keep up with the crowds, and we were there at the end of the second day. The chocolate was delicious and a neat preview of what we would get after the race.
There weren't a whole lot of booths at the expo that I was interested in checking out, but I did spot a sign advertising compression socks on clearance for $10, which was too good to resist. I've been looking to expand my wardrobe in that area and snagged a pair of pastel argyle socks that I couldn't pass up. The official race gear cost a little more than I wanted to spend, so we headed out pretty soon after that to find our airbnb. The walk wasn't bad, but would have been better if it hadn't been raining. We entertained ourselves along the way by trading off Hamilton lyrics, and after some tricky fiddling with key codes and such, finally got out of the rain and arrived at our abode for the weekend!
I laid out my expo haul, such as it was, while Mike grabbed a shower and then we ordered the obligatory pre-race pizza.
The pizza ended up being just kind of okay, but good enough for filling the belly. We then wandered up the street a couple blocks to the CVS because while I'd brought a banana with me for Saturday morning, I'd left it in the car and we wouldn't be walking that way to the starting line, and because we both wanted to pick up some sort of bottled coffee beverage for the morning as well. Unfortunately the CVS was closed, but a Family Dollar nearby was still open, and we acquired the coffees but not the banana. I'd brought some extra food options with me so I wasn't too bothered, though I do enjoy being able to follow basically the same ritual every race day. But you gotta work with what you've got!
After that it was time to turn in and try to get some sleep, not something easily achieved before a race most of the time. I'd brought along my ice pack so had that wrapped around my knee, and eventually managed to drift off, though there were a lot of city noises going on outside that kept waking me up. I'd slept all right the night before, so tried not to stress out about it too much and just get as much rest as I could. Five o'clock the next morning was going to come pretty quickly...
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