I woke up very early, too early, on Saturday morning, with little thought towards the next day’s half marathon.  The plan was to head to the running expo with Ben, Jed, and Pa, pick up my race packet, explore the city, maybe even gamble a little, and just have an easy going day, before dinner that evening.

Who wakes up at 6am on vacation? Seriously? 

Naturally I was nervous to meet Jed and Pa, but quickly felt comfortable around them, especially after I picked up on their Ben-is-always-wrong thought process.

Ben, Pa and Jed

Pa: What are you running tomorrow?
Me: The half
Pa and Jed: Why wouldn’t you run the full?
Me: I donno, I haven’t trained
Ben: Just do it
Me: Ummm, yea… no.
Pa: I don’t get why you wouldn’t
Me: Again, no training, because I’m lazy, because it’s a FULL marathon, as in far. 
Pa and Jed: just do it, you’ll be fine

And then that was that. We walked around the expo looking for food (win! concession burgers), nipple protectors for Mr. Ben (epic fail on this one), and body-glide (fail here too, as they were sold out).

I met up with my other friends, spoke to them for a while, and was in the middle of texting Ben, to find out where he was, when in a moment of utter spontaneity, I walked back to the front of the expo, and boldly told some lady, “Could I please switch from the half to the full?” and without a word, she took my race package, got me a new bib, entered something into a computer, and sent me on my way.

OMG.

I quickly found Ben, Pa and Jed and showed him what I had just done.  What had I just done? I had no idea…

Moments after I told Ben. Shocked, excited, scared, nervous, you name it, I was it.

With the exception of Ben, and his family, and the blog post I made (which I greatly debated making, but figured it would help keep me motivated), I told no one in real life, including my running room friends, and family (my mom would have freaked out).

After the expo, I headed back to my hotel room, for a much needed nap, which just may have been the best nap my body’s ever received (true story, staying up till 4am, waking up at 6am will result in this).  I put together a race outfit, which I hadn’t thought about at all,  

 
 My shorts look HUGE here.

And then got ready for the evening’s festivities, where I was heading to dinner, with Ben (ps I feel like I keep mentioning his name), Jed, and Pa, which Active.Com was hosting.

Side note: I LOVE having a proper camera. It’s a Sony Alpha 55, which I highly recommend (so far).  

Dinner that night falls into my #2 spot of best dinners of my life.  It was held at the Encore-Wynn hotel, and I couldn’t even tell you much about the conversation because I was so lost in the deliciousness of the food. 

Obviously I didn’t take the Wynn photo, and no photo of my main course, because taking photos got embarrassing, but all the food was incredible. The bottom, right would be the amazing Mr. Jim Garfield, from Active.com with the most delicious cake ever, who was our gracious host for the evening. We toasted to scoial-media, which I thought was quite fitting.

The entire evening was topped off with backstage passes, for the four of us, to see Garth Brooks(!!), who was so funny, and made my heart swoon, seriously guys if ‘tomorrow never comes,’ I’d die satisfied .

So yes, as you can see, no thinking about the marathon the next day, just living in the glorious moments of life, but little did I know, the best moment of the trip, was yet to come.