Friday, January 7, 2011

Florida to spectate the Disney Half and Full Marathon... Again.

Yesterday, my cousin and I drove down to Florida. We left at 4a. Way to early, we both barely got any sleep the night before and she almost past out an hour into our travels. I took over and after about 3 hours, I even began to doze. She napped and then took over where I began to nap. The great thing about leaving so early is that we get here early. We made the trip in about 12 hours. With a 30 min stop for lunch and about 3-4x10 min stops for gas and restroom stops. We arrived about 5p, checked into the Radison resort. The same resort I have been to every time for this event the last 4 years now.

We managed to run over the ESPN sport center here at Disney for packet pick up. The excitement was in the air. A nervous, excited, and anxious tension in the air that you can't really explain unless you were here or have been to a big race expo. We grabbed our goody bag which had three tee shirts in it. That's when it hit me, and hard. I'm signed up for this huge two day event, a Disney Half-Marathon that's tomorrow and Disney's Full marathon on Sunday, but I am not running... Practically every one else here picking up their stuff is running, but I have to sit on the sidelines again once again. It was quite depressing and all I really wanted to do was go back home. The feeling just sucked. I'm here for my cousin though, she's running her half marathon tomorrow. She's quite stubborn, which makes her very difficult to coach. I love her to death, but it's frustrating. The full is on Sunday. She is quite nervous about the whole thing. I tell her to just focus on tomorrow. We'll worry about the marathon when we get there. The weather this weekend here is predicted to be perfect running weather with a low in the mid-40's rising to upper 60's/lower 70's. I'm a bit envious...

Afterward, we still had time so we ran over to Downtown Disney. There were some really cool shops, including a new one where you can build your own remote control car. I wasn't so much into the RC cars as I was the real cars they had. There was a competition Corvette (drool...), a Corvette pace car, a beautiful Dodge Viper, and two black pick ups, a suped up Dodge Ram and Ford F-150. They were all gorgeous. I'll post pics later.

Today, we've practically done NOTHING! We woke up, she went out to starbucks and walgreens to run errands, while I went for a mile run to test my knee out. I haven't ran in over a month. It felt good, but my knee started feeling sore after a mile. So I stopped, iced up and did some mobility work. Later we ate lunch and relaxed some more. I did some tri coach work and she read and talked to her boy. Later dinner at Ihop where we played the IQ Test game, those games you typically see at Cracker Barrel with the golf pins, we both got down to two pins, niether could complete the game completely.

I love the weather here, but I'm already looking forward to getting back home. I have class starting on Monday, which I'll miss day one for the drive home. I want to get back to my coaching, both swim and tri. I have some potential clients that I am meeting with this weekend here in Florida and at home once I get back, so I am excited to get things going. Championship week is right around the corner for swimming too. I've got a big couple of months ahead of me and I'm ready to tackle it one day at a time.