Oh Mother Nature

Sometimes things don't go as planned and we all have to accept them and move on. That was the case this past weekend for us. We planned on running the Minneapolis Marathon Sunday, but Mother Nature was not having any of that going on.  

Here is a little recap of our trip to Minneapolis and the expo. We arrived on Friday and our good friend Cliff was meeting us to run his first marathon. We were pretty pumped for him to experience such an incredible accomplishment. Yea, we are pretty good getting people to sign up for these races, suckers!!! Just kidding, it's always fun to get your friends into this crazy life of marathons! Anyways after that we  headed out to a delicious pizza place. It's called pizzeria Lola! Such a cute place and delicious wood fired pizza, a great place to get some carb loading in at.  Ironically, Cliff was given an Arizona plate, he is from there, so we took a pic!

Saturday we headed to the expo, it was a smaller one but had everything we needed. Also this marathon gave out some pretty cool swag! The full marathoners received awesome jackets! We walked around, took photos ya know, what your suppose to do at these expos.
  

Then the fun came, we went to Mall of America!! Holy mother of all malls! It has every store you can image and right outside there is an IKEA! The mall has roller coasters and everything your little heart can imagine. We rode one or the roller coasters, it was a lot faster than it looked! I swear when I was a kid I was fearless, now not so much! I was squealing like a pig on this ride!  We checked out some shops, ya know the normal stores, the Peep store, saw a pig grill, nothing out of the ordinary . We then headed out to dinner Before hitting the sack at 9pm. Yea, yea it's early but when you have to get up to run at 630am it's not that bad:)

 

Sunday morning, I woke up at 330am to get ready for the race. I drank my coffee like normal and relaxed for a bit before starting the process of gliding up.  I swear Gliding up for a marathon takes me a good 10 minutes. I hate chaffing so I covered my body in that stuff. My husband eventually got up, he is usually way more relaxed than I am on race day, and got ready in no time. His usual attire is Captain America. Eventually Cliff came to our room and we took the usual before race pics. Happy to have someone else participate in these. 




yes, they love to make fun of my poses:)



After the photo shoot, we headed to the shuttle pick up. It was drizzling out, and then the down pour rolled in. Thankfully we got to the shuttle before that point. They decided to delay the race from 630am to 8am. Around 7ish they started loading the buses up. We figured the race was a go and off we went. Once we got to the start, we were unloaded and stood in the rain. Not a favorite thing to do before a marathon, but we didn't have an option. We headed up to the corral areas in anticipation we were going to start running shortly. We said goodbye to Cliff at his corral and my husband and I walked to ours. We met some cool pacers running the race. The pacer for 3:30 actually was suppose to do it for 3:05 but needed this spot filled so he took over. What a guy:) lucky dog, wish I could run a marathon in 3:05! AnywAys, we stood around and eventually the bad news was given. All we could hear was people screaming race cancelled.  Not going to lie, we were disappointed, But as runners, we understood. Someone's safety is more important than a race. The weather was predicting flash floods, lightning, and heavy rain, so what option did they have? Canceling was the smart decision that had to be made. 

Therefore What else should you do when your at the start line and they cancel the race??? Go run! so we went and ran 9 miles in the rain and then walked back to our hotel. Definitely felt some love while running. There was some awesome fans on the course cheering us on and passing out wAter. It was pretty awesome of them to still be out there cheering us on.  On the way back to the hotel, we found a giant chair and got to see Target Field. Pretty awesome stadium!  The day was still fun and we will wear our marathon jackets with pride. It's the best race I have never run:) 

 

Yea know I think it was a sign that this happened and that a better race is meant for me to run my 8th full marathon.  Our friend Cliff was suppose to run his 1st marathon, so a major bummer for him, but don't worry we made the best out of the situation! Don't worry friends, my husband and I are already looking for a another Marathon to run this summer and Cliff, Cliff is already signed up for another full in October.  Gotta get to Boston:) that's my new mantra!

Have you ever had a race cancelled?