Part 3: Racing Commandent #2

Racing Commandment #2:

Don’t eat anything unusual or anything that could remotely upset your stomach or otherwise make you sick.

So Kris and I found a Thai restaurant. We love Thai food and the spices don’t get to me. But, I wondered if the spices used at a different Thai restaurant would negatively effect my stomach. But it’s San Francisco. I wasn’t about to go eat at some safe but mundane Olive Garden or something! Beside, I brought a good supply of Pepto Bismo with me just in case. :) So bring it!

Dinner was great and Kris and I stayed mellow and went to bed early. The private shopping started at 7am and I wanted to be out of the hotel at 6:30 to get at the front of the line. (I wasn’t sure how many of us had the ‘exclusive’ privilege of private shopping.)

I don’t think Kris believed I was going to get up that early. You might say I’m not a morning person. In fact, if I am up before 10 on a weekend, the devil gets nervous.

So when I stepped out of the shower the next morning at 5:40am Kris was standing there with a panicked look on his face.

“WHAT are you DOING????”

“I’m getting ready to go. I told you I was hoping to leave the room by 6:30.”

I could tell by the look on his face, he didn’t believe me when I shared my plans the night before. So he scrambled to get ready. I’m sure he thought he was going to have at least three more hours before I would be up. He was shocked! Hee hee hee!

It was still dark out when we hit the streets. The protesters were still there. But they were fewer at this time and they were much more quiet. The whole city was quiet. It was nice. I wondered if there’d be a crowd at Niketown this early.

We arrived at Niketown fifteen minutes before the private shopping opened. There were four gals in front of us. That’s it. I would have liked to have gotten pictures of the name wall. But it was still too dark.

Private shopping was great! Well worth getting up early. There were a ton of help so I basically had a personal shopper to help me find all my gear. I could browse the items before they were picked over. I didn’t have to wait in line for the cashier.  And they had a DJ and MC for us. At 7 in the morning! Can you believe it?

Two odd things I noted however: 1) even though this was a ‘women’s’ marathon, I was surprised they only had one item for men. 2) They provided ‘breakfast’ for us. Hot coffee and various pastries and doughnuts. Are you kidding me?? We have a marathon to run the next morning and you are feeding us pastries??? Is that what you provide your Nike pro-athletes? I don’t think so.

Needless to say, I stayed away from them. :) (I love junk food. But for the marathon, I've been scared straight!)

When we left, the sun was up and the sidewalk was still empty. So we snapped pictures of the name wall unjostled.

Then we head back over to the expo. I specifically wanted to hit the Jetblue booth that was screening a video of the route. Kris and I were especially interested to see if the hills were as scary as they looked on the hill profile chart we have seen.

It was great because the video had commentary so we knew exactly where the water stops versus re-fueling stations were. So that was helpful. Also, none of the hills looked scary on the video. Walking away from the course video, I wasn’t scared of ‘nothing’!

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.