Tomorrow morning is “race day” or the Little Rock Marathon Of course, I’m doing the half this year. My training was not what I had hoped. I let the rainy schedule mess with my schedule and I can’t do treadmills.

It should be interesting. So my goal is to finish it in the 4 hours alloted.

So yee haww.

I do get a big kick going to the Expo. There’s always other races with booths there. They have pamphlets outlining their race and they’ll have medals from years past. There’s all these running gear shops like One more mile and Run like a girl. They have the stickers with the “13.1” and the “26.2” There were several different slogans that i liked including “Yes I run like a girl . . . try to keep up” Another one is “You don’t have to go fast. You just have to go” (or something like that) There’s always the “will run for wine” and “Will run for beer.”

My number one favorite t-shirts are “13.1: I don’t go all the way” and it’s counterpart “26.2: I go all the way”

Yes, sex sells even in running gear.

There’s all the interesting people. There’s people from everywhere. There’s the 50 staters (people who try to run a marathon in each of the 50 states) and a bunch of other folks. The races are addictive. There’s something about them.

I’m typing this in the “business center” of a local hotel and so the pictures are just not here. This year is a little anticlimactic. Last year was my first race and there was all this pre race jitters and while I do have a sense of anxiety and excitement, it is nowhere near the level of frenzy of last year.

It’s surprisingly calm. My only source of angst is that I didn’t get a “back number” and I am scared I am going to get disqualified. I didn’t bother looking in my envelope of goodies to check to see if i had it. They opened it up to show my number and pulled a tag off to designate that I had gotten my t-shirt but no back number. I guess I need to go early. yikes.

My mother came up with me again this year. I’m guessing the Little Rock marathon is going to be a tradition where I bond with my Mom. We ate at Chi’s and let rice be our carbo loading. She’s got a lot of cheering to do tomorrow.