Rockin' the Alamo (Part 1)

Jan and I just drove in from a fun-filled weekend of romance in San Antonio (oh, and throw in a little HALF MARATHON for good measure). Yep, between a whole lot of smoochin' which constituted by far the highlight of my weekend, I spent Sunday morning in less than ideal weather conditions, running the San Antonio Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon.

I'm not going to report on all our extracurricular activities. Those are for us to keep to ourselves. But I will give a race report. My goal for this race was frankly to finish and more importantly, I was going to use this as a dry run for Houston. In this respect, I'd say I considered Sunday's effort a success. In the back of my mind, though, I really did want to break 3 hours. And that goal was really a fall-back goal, knowing the weather was going to suck. Still, I wasn't as worried as much about my time as I was just practicing my race weekend routine.

We hit packet pick-up and the Expo on Friday afternoon which ended up being a good call. It took about 3 minutes to pic up my packet, get my shirt, and make it into the expo. It was a lot of fun having Jan with me. It's something I've really missed since I started running and now with Jan's recent interest in health and fitness, she really got into being at the expo. Unfortunately (or fortunately), when Jan gets "into" something, it usually means spending money. :) The FIRST booth we hit at the expo, Jan picked up a really cool, stretchy waistband pouch that can hold a BUNCH of stuff. The guy working the booth pulled out like 5 Gu's his driver's license and a credit card, and his iPod. Anyway, I have to admit, it really was cool. We hit the Rider sandals booth where I was going to pick up a new pair of flip flops to flop around with after workouts and races. I got my pair and then met up with Jan and looked in her bag. She bought TWO pair. O-K!!! Glad you're excited, dear. She ended up with a couple tech shirts, and a 18 month subscription to Women's Running magazine. Anyway, I'm glad we went on Friday because from what we heard, a lot of stuff was gone on Saturday. For example, we got a big stack of Subway coupons at the Subway booth. On Saturday, they were all gone. :) Subway anyone?

Friday night we had a wonderful visit with Jan's cousin and his family who live in San Antonio. They made a runner-friendly dinner for us with baked chicken, salad, and a nice vegetable casserole with potatoes and shrimp. We got back to the hotel and got a GREAT night's sleep.

Saturday morning, Jan slept in while I went on the hunt for the nearest Starbucks which ended up being just 2 blocks from the Westin where we were staying. It was so nice sitting down on the Riverwalk, enjoying my coffee, texting and Facebooking on the cell phone. While I was sitting there, who walks by but Jon Bingham, "The Penguin" himself. We chatted only briefly as I figured he was busy and I failed to get a picture with him. Stupid!!!

The goal the rest of Saturday was to stay off my feet as much as possible so we lounged around the hotel until lunch. We found a Subway on the map just a few blocks from us so we walked on over. On the way, we found a deli that was doing a lot of business. It's called Shilo's and it turned out to be a great find. The split pea soup was to die for. We walked back to the hotel with really nothing else planned for the rest of the day. We did want to hit the expo one more time to see some Houston peeps that came in on Saturday. We headed back for another round and hit pay dirt. Walking in, I ran into a couple friends from work. We saw Felix, Will, Anne, Jill, Laura, Anna, Ralph, Doreen, Catherine, Amber, Chance, and a bunch of others. We met some other folks from Houston. Some people from Clear Lake recognized my USA 10-miler shirt and we chatted for a while. Of course, Jan bought some more stuff.

We met up with Steve and his family for dinner and an average restaurant, not one I'd frequent again, but at least I got a light dinner in me and some good water. I finalized with Amber and Catherine our plans for the morning. Catherine suggested we beat the crowd and I'm glad we did. We left the hotel at 4:30 and were on what was probably the first shuttle over to the start village. We arrived with LOTS of time to rest and relax and talk trash before the start. I'll take that any day over fighting crowds and stressing out wondering if you're going to get there in time. The 3 of us found a curb and cop'd a squat on PRIME real estate. We were just across from the port-a-cans, a hop, skip, and a jump from our starting corral, although Catherine's corral was just a wee bit close to the start than corral 25. We were right next to our own trash can, and front row to what ended up being a very entertaining show. See, we were seated right in front of a speed bump and we were in stitches. As people would walk by, almost without fail, they would stumble over that bump. All these graceful athletes, tall, short, elites, it didn't matter. The hump was no respecter of persons. Suffice it to say, that kept us entertained for the better part of an hour and a half until it was time to start getting serious about getting ready to race.