We Survived Nash-Vegas!

Our Nashville adventure began on Friday when we headed to the great city of music. Along with 100,000 + other people. First stop (besides the many on the way up...a girl's gotta get hydrated, yo) was the Expo...which is just a delightful pre-event fiasco that should be renamed "try to find a parking spot in our city and we might let you run here, too". Several hours after parking, walking to the convention center, picking up our numbers (omg am I really going to do this) and sampling all sorts of scary, health-crazed vita-chewy gonna make you run faster snacks, we were headed to our hotel.

Ahhh, Hotel Preston, you rascal. Best way to describe our home away from home is motel 6 meets art deco. Let me just tell you that when there is a race this big in town just about every hotel within a 50 mile radius sells out. So, if it weren't for Shana promising the sales manager she would name her first born Preston, trust me, we would have been in quite a pickle. There were all sorts of fun art pieces in and around the hotel, like the giant abstract chicken...pictures will be posted soon...and the "pink slip" made entirely of crayons and named for the hotel lounge/bar. Or, perhaps the bar was named for this piece of art. Either way, I digress. The hotel was lovely, with it's furry leopard elevators. And Aveda bath products. But...I just get the vibe that one day I might see it on a 20/20 special where they swab the carpet and find out the entire staff is infected with the swine flu. Just a feeling. You can't fool me, Hotel Preston.

After checking into our hotel and covering myself in Purell, we headed to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown. A place that, despite the near record temperatures, thought it was a valid explanation to say their A/C unit was controlled by corporate in Florida and there was nothing they could do to change the stifling temperature. Why did we not see the signs? The difficulty parking, the strange, furry hotel, the 100+ degree restaurant -- what were we thinking going ahead and running this race??

Here's a series of pictures from Hard Rock that could make a flip book for true love. First a sweet moment, then Dan moves in for a picture that I ruin with my flagrant immaturity and then, oh, gross...not a kiss!

Despite all the obstacles, we were up the next morning at 4:30, ready for our 5 am departure. My friend Katie was running the half and she ended up doing awesome!

Here we are saying farewell to Blake and Dan as they dropped us off at the start line. Shana is contemplating the fact that she has to name her first born Preston. I am wondering if my neck slept in or is just shy about pictures.

We spent the next hour or so before the race began making fun of everyone possible. Look at the shirtless guy's gut hanging out. Watch out chafing in corral number 18, etc., etc. This is not the best way to begin a race in which you will eventually be pleading with the Lord for sweet mercy. A better strategy may have been to help the elderly cross the road, volunteer to catch someone's pre-race jitters vomit or massage a Kenyan's feet. Anything but make fun of the people who will eventually pass you at mile 19.

Speaking of 19, we were in corral 19 out of about 32 and the corrals were released every two minutes beginning at 7 am. 25, 000 people ran the half marathon while 7,500 did the full marathon. So...it took us the better part of the first hour to even approach the starting line. Once we did...it was on. We ran strong for the first half, enjoying the bands and the never EVER ending hills. Where was my topographical map when I signed up for this nightmare? With every mile the temperatures rose, eventually closing in on 90 degrees -- the temps were 2 degrees off the record high. Water stations turned into salt stops where volunteers urged us to down packets of salt to keep our electrolytes balanced. On the back half, miles 15-17 were down a greenway in the middle of nowhere. I really thought buzzards were going to find my body. We stopped sweating around mile 18, which is a really terrifying thing if you've ever been on that side of a physical challenge and in that kind of heat.

But, we stayed side by side, praying and grunting. Dan and Blake found us throughout the run at different mile points while Shana's AWESOME sunday school friends cheered us on, too. Somehow we finished. I know God was with us and I finished the race sobbing -- just not comprehending what we had been through. We knew there was no other option than to finish and I am blessed to have run with a friend who saw it through to the end, though at times all we could hear on the course were ambulances. We even saw people passing out at mile 25...can you imagine being that close and not finishing? Here are some pics from the start of the race...more to come soon...but Dan had to go out of town for work and I think he took the camera with him!