Night Before the Race: Minneapolis Marathon

I got up some old race reports – finished writing them on the plane here. Better late than never, right? Check them out:

Lake Geneva Marathon
Fargo Night Before the Race
Fargo Marathon
Vermont Night Before the Race
Vermont City Marathon

In other administrative news, I finally got a domain: 50by25.com. I figured it’s a succinct way to describe my quest, and will be a lot easier to describe in interviews than having to spell out “Absolut(ly) Fit”. However, for now I’m going to keep that as the name of the blog – it’s more fitting for my life in general instead of so specific to this quest.

So why interviews? Oh, no reason… just that I’m going to be appearing live on the New York Nightly News on Monday night. And the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Albany Times Union are publishing newspaper articles about me. And Runner’s World is going to be doing a story about me. HOW FREAKING COOL IS ALL THAT?! I’ve been super busy this past week doing all those interviews (as well as all the other race prep, plus working at my new job).

But I digress. So once I arrived in Minneapolis, I met up with my friend John and my parents, and we headed off to the hotel. The expo was fun – I got my picture taken with the associate race director and in front of , and they posted it directly to the Team Ortho Facebook page, which was pretty neat.

From the expo, my parents headed up to the room for a quick clothing change, while John and I I got our first beers of the night at the hotel bar. I opted for a Leinenkugel Golden Wheat: not quite local (it’s from Wisconsin), but still something that’s not terribly easy to get in New York, and it’s delicious besides. I was quite content! We also saw a few other runners while at the hotel bar, including my friend Guillermo who I roomed with for my Maryland race. So nice to have all these people here to run with and cheer me on!

Next, we headed off to the race director’s brother’s house, who was hosting a special pasta party honoring me and my record finish! So cool. There was a cake decorated for me (don’t worry, I ate plenty), and lots of people wanted to meet me and get their picture taken with me. There was even a little kid who wanted my autograph! What a great pre-race dinner to boost my mood 🙂

Though I was in a food coma from all the delicious pasta and dessert I ate, we still made it a point to stop at the Town Hall Brewery for one drink to knock me out for the night. I couldn’t decide between the Grand Cru (really alcoholic Belgian beer that was one of the seasonal selections on tap and made by Town Hall) or the Crispin Cider (less alcoholic, not from Town Hall but it was a Minnesota brewery, and I do love my cider). I opted for the Grand Cru – how do you pass up 9.5% alcohol by volume? You know how I prep the night before a race 🙂

Of course, all that beer and food has rendered me basically unconscious. It’s time to rest up… the big day is finally almost here, and I am going to blow this record out of the water!

Want to support me tomorrow even if you’re not in Minneapolis?
Thanks to the wonders of technology, there are a few ways you can do so:
1. Keep checking my Facebook status – the race officials created an app that is going to automatically update my status message when I cross a chip mat.
2. Send me an e-mail at laura@50by25.com – I’ll be carrying my phone during the race and it will alert me with any new mails to that account
3. Leave me a post on my fan page. I’ll check it as soon as I finish the race.