This past weekend was the 30th running of the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon, and it was a GORGEOUS weekend for racing! The weekend started out on Thursday when the TCM office deployed to the RiverCentre in St. Paul. I always feel a touch of nostalgia and think of my military deployments when going in full operations mode for “marathon weekend”. My mom was kind enough to donate 8 hours of her day and help me in the Temp Office by answering phones for me while I tended to administrative support and emails from participants, vendors and sponsors. At 8pm, Thursday was a wrap and time to pick up food for staff at the Liffey. My dad gave me a ride and I got to see Kirra who wasn’t to pleased to watch me leave her again when I had to go back to my hotel room for my all staff meeting/venting session. I got curried chicken which was delicious as always and headed to bed with my roommate Andrea. Our room once again was SO HOT! This happened to me back in 2009 as well, as you can see by clicking on the words SO HOT! We turned our thermostat down to 60 and turned the fan on. It seemed slightly better, so we went to bed. We woke up on Friday not feeling much relief, but it was time to head to Expo Day #1 (Friday). Friday I had Pam helping me in the morning. She quickly learned the rules of the road (racing), and was able to answer questions quickly and efficiently! She was a total jewel to have in the office! Later that day Cindy came in to help me once again. Bless her! She is always so on top of things,and luckily has done this before so knows most answers to questions. She also gave me a ride to get dinner and bring me back to the hotel! Which was good since Cossettas put our food in 14 huge bags, and was a bit tough to carry! I had Chicken Marsala for dinner and some pasta on the side. When I got back to our room, I was still SO HOT! So I called down to the front desk at 11:30 and had the night engerier unlock our window slits, and bring us a fan.{He explained to us that he winterizes the hotel and shuts off the air conditioning, which would explain that even when I turn the air way down its not doing anything but re-circulating the air that’s already in the room!} Within 5 seconds it was total relief! 20 Minutes later I’m quite convinced I had slight food poisoning. Probably because the person taking my order at Cossetas wasn’t too excited about taking a 14 person order when there was a Wild Game, and hungry marathoners in town! I didn’t actually get sick, but if I hadn’t fallen asleep so quickly I might have… Waking up on Saturday morning, feeling totally fine I headed over to Saturday Events with prize packs in tow. I stayed for the 10K and 5K and saw my friend Katherine run the 10K. It felt kind of strange knowing that Kirra was going to be skipping out on the Toddler Trot this year due to dance, but was also needed back at the Temp Office as well,since i’m sure my volunteer Melissa probably didn’t want to be stranded alone in the temp office winging answers on the fly. Expo Day #2 (Saturday) 2pm shift change, and our Telephone rep Paul came in to finish out the Temp Office night! He’s so great at customer service, so I basically also let him answer all the phone calls! (actually come to think of it, my volunteers DID take most of the calls), which would explain why the temp office seemed so much more relaxed this year! I was also a lot busier, so I truly thank God for the help! My co-worker Colleen and I headed over to the Lake Street Bridge once everything at the Expo was packed up, closed up, and shipped up. She helped me pick up food at Señor Wong’s and bring it back to the hotel. It was a combination Mexican/Thai/Asian restaurant which was ridiculously delicious! We finished up the night around 11:30 again, and headed straight for bed! I was then off for a lovely 26.2 mile gator ride to the finish of the marathon! {except my gator was not John Deere, and not that fancy} It started out crisp and cool. I had on a T-Shirt/Tech Shirt/Warm Flece Sweatshirt/lightweight jacket/heavier softshell jacket/wind jacket and of course a hat and gloves on. Ever so often layers just peeled off and off, and by the finish line I was down to my T-Shirt rounding out the day at around 70 degrees. I yelled out to over 300 intersections for course marshals to leave up their barricades as there were an additional 25 or so vehicles behind me… and around mile 23 or 24 I started yelling out to participants who weren’t injured or sick, but needed some motivation that they weren’t going to be a quitter, and they were going to dig deep and finish! And everyone who we really motivated did! As one EMS person put it that was on a gator next to me… its like seeing your baby go to Kindergarten when they cross that finish line. I was truly so excited for them, that when I finished I parked my gator and ran to the finish chute and gave them a huge hug! About 5:30 after helping to do a FOD walkdown {except… not exactly since we weren’t all standing in a line… none-the less you have to scour the grounds of the state capitol like an F-14 depends on it for trash instead of FOD..} on the capitol grounds I was finally headed home to see my baby and my husband! I now have no voice hardly. Its very scratchy and i’m sure in the next day or two it will be completely gone! Today we had breakfast as a staff and shared in jubilation our stories from the weekend. We then picked up the marathon course trash that was left over, and headed out. Tomorrow will be checking e-mails,sorting out lost and found, and putting our real office back together! Until next year, Marathon Weekend Re-Cap