Mankato Marathon Expo and Race

So to continue in the right direction after the TC10 mile we decided to sign up for the Mankato Half Marathon.  Right after TC I was actually contacted by the Mankato group asking if we wanted to come down and have a booth at the expo again.  They supposedly had received our insurance information and wanted to know if we were indeed coming.   Believe me, we did NOT send our insurance information so it was just a line to contact us with but obviously it worked since we bought into a booth.  They were offering half price cost and we ended up signing over 200 new emails to our RaceGuide365 newsletter list so it was worth it.   Plus gave Mark a chance to chat in person with a few ZapEvent customers and potential customers. 

In the picture you can see our new UpTempo Logo and Expo backdrop that we are very excited about. Plus we also now have a Plinko board. Draws them in like flies and all they have to do is give me their email address to play and win a prize. Value for Value!

The keynote speaker was pretty cool too.  Kathrine Switzer.  If you are a marathon runner, you know who she is.  (her story)  She truly paved the way for women in marathon running so it was really cool to hear her speak and then get to meet her afterwards.  Mark bought me her book and we had her sign it.   She's super nice, although you can tell some that she does know she's important and goes through the motions a bit when meeting her fans.

Before the race we damn near froze to death, luckily tucking into a spot in a slightly heated bus stop.  It did start to rain right before the start and at the moment I realized my iPod had very little battery charge, Mark decided he was going to run with me that day.   I know he doesn't always enjoy my slower pace but it is really fun to run together in races once and awhile.  Even if he insists on singing aloud, not looking like running is taking him much effort when I'm about ready to fall over I'm so tired :-P

I originally planned on running by myself but as the weather forecast became more dire ;) I decided to run with Kris and keep her sprits up during the frosty morning. I was hoping that we could run a sub 2:00 hour half and the entire race I had the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld in my head yelling "No 2's for You." I know, I am weird.

IT band came on pretty strong again in the last mile.   Thought it might hold out for me but the last mile was pretty painful and my stride really shortened up because of it but Mark kept me going and we crossed the finish line hand in hand.  <3 data-blogger-escaped-font="">

Oh and it was some weird deja vu in the last 3 miles or so as we were running through the area and park that we came down to for a geocaching event a couple years ago.  The OTAK event.

And it took us all of 5 seconds after getting back to our hotel room to grab a celebratory drink :)

The beer pictured is Organ Grinder from Mankato Brewery - Not bad but I came up with a new hashtag that I am going to use in the future. #drinklocal

I only noticed once along the course that my right toenail may be poking my other toe a bit but it quickly resolved itself and I forgot all about it.  Until I went to take my shoes off to take a shower and noticed that it actually bled so bad it soaked into my shoe!!

I've switched to trying Saucony's and so far have liked running in them but this is an odd instance because I have never had a bloody toenail issue in my right foot.  It's always been the left foot, middle toe toenail digging into my second biggest toe.   This time was the same exact issue just the opposite foot.

On the way out of town Mark noticed a fun little stop:

I love finding game shops and checking out how they are setup. Dork Den has a great name and is a really nice shop, very friendly and they introduced me to the artwork of Art Lucia. Very Cool!

And I couldn't resist stopping at the gigantic Candy store along Hwy 169 that was having their fall festival of apples and pumpkins and squash.

  ---Oh and as I was writing this blog, we found out just how much of a chicken Rugar can be.   Mark accidentally overboiled a pot of jalapeno jam on the stove and it created some major smoke and as soon as the smoke alarm went off, Rugar was beside himself and when we put him outside, he was sitting on the ground with his leash stretched out as far away from the house as he could get, shivering harder than I've ever seen him before.  Our big chicken ;)  Granted I found Sugar underneath the deck as well.

In my defense, I was washing dishes when the pot overboiled. I can not comment about a watched pot but I can confirm that an unwatched pot will boil.