Cleveland Marathon - The Day Before

Enthusiasm is also like a river. Get into the mainstream of your dream. Let enthusiasm flow through you like a river and let it burn through you like a wild fire. Keep yourself energized by believing that your success is inevitable. - Keith Cameron Smith

Just a quick "Part 1" to the Cleveland Marathon weekend.  Just got home and it's been a totally crazy day and the race day recap may be a bit lengthy, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.  I would include it now, but I'm sorta tired.  Have no idea why though....(yes, sarcasm)

Saturdays plan...check into hotel, go to expo, go to pasta dinner, hang out and relax...Sounds easy enough, right.

Let me start off by saying if you ever come to Cleveland and need to stay downtown.  Do NOT stay at the Renaissance Hotel.  They have no clue, a bit rude and play you for idiots.  They give us our room....3 people...ONE bed.  The guy tells us they don't guarantee 2 beds and asks if we want a rollaway.  We get to the room and there is already a rollaway in the room.  Why?  Because as we found out, they overbooked all the 2-bed rooms and rather than saying that, they tried to play dumb.  Housekeeping shows up with a rollaway and is confused, not only to why there was one in there already, but how exactly are we fitting that in the room.  Yes, I forgot to mention the fact the room was so small, one rollaway could NOT fit in the room without having to crawl on things.  So this guy is nice enough to call downstairs and flat out tell the front desk that we need a new room now.

With the room in limbo, headed to the Expo to meet up with some bloggers, get our packets and walk around.  As I walk up to get my bib number and shirt I notice the men's shirts are bright Halloween Orange.  Maybe something to do with the Cleveland Browns official colors.  A bit flashy for me, but hey, still a free workout shirt.  I go through the goodie bag and in it....Flyers, coupons, lady speed stick and women's headbands.  Really?  LOL  Lovely....Of course I had to put on the headband, too bad they forgot to take a pic  :-)
Walk around and they had two of the speakers sitting at the table signing pictures.  One of them was Bill Rodgers, former Olympian and also 4-time winner of the Boston Marathon and 4-time winner of the NYC Marathon.  I thought it would be neat to talk to him and I also knew he was born in the same city as me, Hartford, CT.  He took the time to chat individually with each person, sign a picture and our bib #'s.  He may have mentioned that his very first marathon, 1973 Boston Marathon, that he didn't finish, which I was 50/50 on hearing...
Then we ran into the Cleveland 10 Miler girls, as I call them.  Mellisa, Kim and Deb were there to pick up their packets and I think they were "slightly" excited to hear that the female runners got pink shirts.  Unfortunately we couldn't spend anytime with them, but hoped to all get together before the race.

We headed back to the hotel to find that the parking lot was full but we managed to flash a parking pass they gave us and quickly got that resolved...LOL  But the room issue, not so much.  Finally got them to give us another room, which the lady said she "thought" would be bigger....At least this one could fit the rollaway, but still a bit rough.  Last try and yet another room.  I may have said that it didn't matter what the size was of the 3rd room, that we are going to take it.  Come to find out on the elevator ride up, that they screwed up most rooms.  Along with the runners, they had 2 wedding parties and one of them said they screwed up EVERY one of their rooms....Nice.  We loaded up our stuff and headed to the room, finally....

The pasta dinner was pretty cool and a free meal, thanks to Jenn who won the tickets.  I was in charge of finding a table, since well, I was told I'm a magnet for people to talk to.  Found a table and ate some food and shared some stories, which is always fun.  It was there that we met up with Joanna, a blogger from Missouri, who I for some reason thought was from Florida, I don't know why, I'm a moron from time to time.  Towards the end a guy from Canada (who was sitting by himself) asks if he could join us.  Come to find out he was running the marathon.  I believe he said it was his first one and then the reason why he chose Cleveland. "It's a destination location".  Well Joanna turns to him with a confused looked and asked him if he was serious.  I thought that was funny, but he was.  Never heard that word used in the same sentence w Cleveland.

We headed back to the hotel and Jodi received a text from Morgan aka "Red".  Without going into detail, lets just say Jodi couldn't wait to meet this girl all week.  She is sorta of the "Queen Bee" as I like to say of the bloggers.  She seems to know everyone and is also great runner.  So granted, I wanted to meet her as well because I really wanted to see if how she "sounded" in her blogs and emails was how she was....Which is bubbly, smiley, full of energy.  The answer I found...um, ya, spot on.  She and her boyfriend came down from Michigan just to cheer on one of her best friends (who flew in from Florida) and a bunch of people she has never met.  Pretty cool and was much needed. (More on that tomorrow)

Went up to the room where we may have gotten slap happy and I was wide awake.  Girls were heading to bed around 10:30 and I can't remember the last time I was in bed that early.  Yes, had to be up at 4:30, needed some rest, but I just was still wired.  I went and walked around the lobby, check the weather outside until heading back up about an hour later....Time for bed

As far as a preview for tomorrow's post....

All that matters is that I was able to finish the 2011 Cleveland Marathon.  If only the explanation and story were that easy...

Until Next Time.....