By this time tomorrow, I’ll be celebrating the finish of my second marathon!

I am proud to report that my massage therapist may actually be a life saver.  I saw him on Wednesday and we did 90 minutes of just leg work and my pesky right hammie is nowhere to be seen for 2 days now! (Knock on wood!)  He told me I had at least 9 trigger points in the back of my right upper leg, alone! I will say, it was the most unpleasant 90 minutes I have had in awhile (I’m talking some tears and verbal, um we’ll call it “feedback,” to poor Franklin), but he told me to suck it up and I’m glad I did!  It didn’t feel amazing that same night so I was a little skeptical this had made any difference, but the last couple of days I have not felt any pain.  It had gotten to the point that even sitting was uncomfortable and while I ran 11 miles feeling that was last weekend, it certainly was not pleasant.  Fortunately, at least at this point, I’ll at least be starting my race feeling in good shape and that’s really all I was hoping for, to not feel defeated before I even started.

I met my parents at the airport in DC yesterday morning and after checking into our hotel we hit up the Expo.  I’m very glad we did this on Friday because we waited almost 90 minutes just to wind our way through one of the craziest lines I’ve ever been a part of to purchase my marathon gear!  Getting my bib took 90 seconds; buying my jacket, 90 minutes. Crazy!  People were generally in good spirits, though, and we did make some line friends.  I also got THE LAST VIP Port-a-Potty pass!  Apparently this is a special pre-race area to use actual climate controlled bathrooms with running water. Um, yes please!  I’ll be sure to check this out and report back. This might be more important than the actual updates from my run! 😉

Clearly took a few photo-ops at the Expo.

I was literally exhausted after exploring the expo.  Not because it was large, because it wasn’t all that huge, but I was functioning on 3 hours of sleep and there was a lot of standing in that damn line.  (So you all know, if I can’t finish tomorrow for some reason, my fall back excuse is that it’s Brooks’ fault as they had poor checkout line management and my legs were just too exhausted from standing so long.  Sounds reasonable, right?)

My parents and I are staying in Old Town Alexandria in Virginia.  It’s so cute.  Has been super easy to navigate around so far as we’ve been taking the Metro or walking everywhere.  Today I slept in (no alarm was amazing, I got like 10 hours of sleep!!) and then we walked around King Street which had lots of fun little shops to explore.  We walked down to the waterfront on the Potomac River and then back.  A little over 2 miles, with many store stops and a stop for lunch.

Tonight I’m keeping it low key, but I am sending my parents out to a celebration dinner for their anniversary to Restaurant Eve.  Their anniversary was in June, but because they are so hard to shop for, I figured this was a great opportunity to send the to a fancy and delicious dinner (and selfishly give me a little alone time at the hotel tonight 🙂  ).

So I’m definitely getting really excited and will be prepping my marathon outfit and other stuff later.  I have really awesome plans for a soaking bath tonight, hopefully some bad TV or a movie, and then a whole lot of sleep (if I can even fall asleep!)  I have a ton of cheers through the Motigo app and I can’t wait to have my family and friends along with me on the course tomorrow!

You can be certain there is an awesome post to come with all the race pics you can handle, so stay tuned!

Until then, happy running!