Week in Review (August 22 - August 28)

Tuesday (13,458 steps) - Bonus work from home day! Joyce is on vacation, so I opted to stay at home and work on packing and getting things done. Took Olive for a walk at lunch. No idea what else? 

Wednesday (15,599 steps) - Work in the office. After work I headed to Louisville Roost for run club. We had MORE rain on the drive there. Thankfully it stopped by the time our run started. I ran with Lisa again. 

Met Ben at 4 Noses for a beer before heading home to make dinner.

Thursday (10,776 steps) - Work from home. Ariel and I went to get coffee! I know these are terrible for me, but they are so delicious.

Took Olive for a walk at lunch. They are doing some maintenance near the neighborhood and putting in a gate by the trails because there's been an issue (apparently) with private vehicles trying to drive into the park?

Met Ben at Parry's for a beer before picking up a pizza from Costco for dinner.

Friday (13,091 steps) - Ben arrived at the house at 4:10 in the morning to take me to the airport. I was able to drop my bag at the curb and it only took about 5 minutes to get through security. I walked around to get my steps in waiting for the flight. I was actually in A boarding and got a seat in the third row. I watched "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." I'm not usually one for sappy movies, but I actually enjoyed this one. Finished it before the flight was over, so then I started "Pitch Perfect" for the zillionth time. 

Landed in Oregon to overcast (smoky?) skies. We de-planed really quick and I headed to Hertz to get my rental. I ended up with a Jeep Compass. I routed to Sisters before leaving the garage and thought I had selected the fastest way to get there. The drive was really pretty and I realized that the Hood to Coast relay was happening, right on the road I was driving on! When I pulled over to see if I could walk a bit on a trail, I finally figured out I was on the scenic route.

I was truly in the middle of nowhere and decided I would stop at the first brewery to get lunch and a beer. This turned out to be in Madras!

And TOTALLY unlike me, my lunch was a Cubano. It was delicious though. I still had a lot of time until packet pick up, so I decided to drive to Bend to try a beer there before going back up to Sisters. (Lots of driving, but what else was I going to do?)  

Arrived at packet pick up just after 4:00. In my envelope was... my bib and pins. That's it.  Haha. Then I grabbed my shirt, dropped off my drop bags. When I was in line to get my picture done I heard from Kerry - my ride to Bend.

We stuck around for a bit chatting and then Kerry gave me and another racer, Dean, a ride to Bend (so we could leave our cars at the finish line). The "hotel" I picked definitely looked sketch from the outside, but they had obviously worked hard to make the inside nice. It was clean, and no complaints.

I walked down the street to a discount grocery store to pick up a microwave personal pizza for dinner, some water and breakfast for the morning. I got everything as organized as I could for morning and laid out all my race clothes.

Completely outside my norm, I took an Advil PM around 7:30 (while watching Oceans 11) and went to bed around 8:30. I had the fan all the way up on the AC which helped to drown out the street noise, and I actually slept pretty well, getting over 7 hours of sleep, which is unheard of.

Saturday (139,541steps) - Oregon Cascades 100

Sunday (86,454 steps) - Finishing Oregon Cascades 100.

Because I am not an intelligent person, I had booked my last night in Oregon back in Portland. The drive was supposed to be three hours, and I had not slept since before the race started. I knew I was on a tight window before I wouldn't be able to do the drive, so I didn't stay too long at the finish. (And thankfully, I finished faster than planned!)

I had mapped the way back intending to go towards Salem and then take the interstate up. I didn't realize I was on the very edge of town and by the time I checked there wasn't going to be a gas station for over an hour. I was on the phone with Ben and he found a nearby general store. I was able to change out of my race clothes (I did NOT smell great) and was able to get some fluids for the drive.

I made it about a half hour down the road before I got VERY tired. I pulled over at the first dirt road I could find and then napped for about a half hour. When I attempted to get the map pulled back up I realized I didn't have any phone service. Lucky for me I knew the general direction I had to go. I think it was at LEAST an hour before I got service. I stopped along the way and got Dairy Queen (chocolate blizzard and fries!) and a big Mountain Dew for the remainder of my drive. 

I had an elaborate plan to drive to the hotel (near the airport) to check in and leave my bags there, drive to the airport to return the rental and then shuttle back so I wouldn't have to do it in the morning. I quickly washed all the dirt off my legs before driving to the airport. Everything was easy! I got a shuttle back in no time, and then I was on the phone with Ben telling him about my plans to walk to the brewery. He ended up scheduling me Lyft, and I didn't have time to take a shower first, but that's ok. 

The brewery nearby also had pizza, so it was great for post-race food and beer. 

I managed to eat a giant slice of pizza and have a few beers before I got really tired. Took a Lyft back to the hotel and showered, figuring I could deal with all my stuff in the morning.

Monday (10,401 steps) - I woke up VERY early. Thankfully, the hotel had some great breakfast! I used the waffle maker for the first time - mmmm, red velvet!

I decided to veg out a bit and was watching some dumb show on tv and fell asleep for another hour or so. Then I had to tackle all the packing. 

Once I'm heading home, I am much less worried about all my stuff, but I did want to get sorted in a way that would make sense for unpacking later. All I wanted to carry on was a tiny bag (which I needed for all batteries, wallet, phone, etc). Took about an hour to pack and take a shower. Decided to walk to get coffee. It seemed close on the map, but the street I had to cross made NO sense. There were three separate crosswalk signals, and I had to wait at every little intersection. DUMB. Plus, it was kinda chilly. Made a note to pull my hoodie out of my checked bag.

And then by the walk back, it was lightly raining. Brrr!! I decided to head to the airport when it was time to check out, at noon.

First irritation. For Frontier, you can't check in until three hours before the flight. Ok fine. I had to wait a half hour. But! At PDX there is NO seating. So I'm sitting on the floor. Check in. Cool!! ONLY YOU CANNOT DROP OFF YOUR BAG UNTIL TWO HOURS BEFORE THE FLIGHT. So now, I have a whole hour to wait. And normally I would walk around but my bag is heavy and awkward. So more sitting on the floor. NOT HAPPY. There is also NO bar, NO restaurants?! WTF!! Almost every airport I have been to has food options BEFORE security. Not here. UGH.

Finally, I can drop my bag off, which is easy. **Hoping it makes it back because the people at the desk didn't seem to know what they were doing.** Head towards my gate and find somewhere for lunch.

As it got closer to boarding time, I was walking around near the gate and saw a few guys with race gear on and asked about their races. They were both crazy fast, and turns out they are also from Colorado (which makes sense since they were flying to Denver).

Shockingly, everything worked out with the flight. We left on time, flight was fine, I wasn't sitting next to any obese people. I had downloaded episodes of "Beef" to watch - what a crazy show.

Arrived on time in Denver, and Ben came to pick me up. When I got to baggage claim, my bag was already there. 

We stopped for a beer on the way home. By the time I got there I was exhausted and went to bed.

Stats:

• 289,320 steps
• 103.62 miles run
• 0 minutes of cardio
• 10 minutes of strength