My First Marathon

I know what you're expecting.  You're expecting to hear about the time I ran twenty six point two miles.  That's a good story but you're going to have to wait for it, because first you have to hear about my journey to Seattle. 

For those of you who know me, you'll know that I'm the organized type.  When travelling with friends in a group, I'm the one who hands printed itineraries to everyone, emails everyone beforehand with a packing list and brings extras in case anyone forgets.  With that context then, you'll understand my absolute horror and shame, when at 8am, 90 minutes before our 9:30am flight, I tried to check in at San Francisco airport, only to be told, "I'm sorry, you should be at San Jose airport."  I had gotten Sean out of bed at 6am that morning; we had driven the 35 minutes north to the WRONG AIRPORT!  "Oh my god, how could I have done this?" was all I could think.  What followed for the rest of the day was a panicked desperate marathon attempt to correct my mistake.

At first I thought we would never make it to San Jose in time for the flight.  We had parked in long term parking and had to get a bus back there and then drive in rush hour traffic back the way we had come.  We tried to get a flight out of San Francisco instead.  This proved to be a big mistake.  We worked with the gate agent to look up all the options.  There were no direct flights left and the option that would get us to Seattle earliest took us via Phoenix, way out of the way.  We would arrive in Seattle at 6pm and it would cost $900.  Yikes!  The gate agent told us that there were more options from San Jose and advised us to drive back down there.

So off we went, back to the long term parking shuttle stop, where we waited 10 minutes for a shuttle.  The driver was in fine form and joked and laughed with us and drove WAY TOO SLOWLY! Thank God for Sean who kept his cool the whole time, hugging me and telling me that, "Of course we'll make it to Seattle.  Sure, we have all day and there will be options from San Jose."  I alternated between quiet horror that I had made this mistake and weeping dread that we would not get to Seattle in time, all the while knowing that I had to conserve my energy if I planned to run twenty six point two miles the next day.  Needless to say, there were a few tears.

We finally made it back to our car.  Sean drove spirit-raising-ly fast and we got to San Jose airport in record time.  At the airport, the woman behind the desk was moved by my desperate pleas for help and called the gate to see if there was any possibility that we could make it.  There were a few wonderful seconds during which my hopes were raised but it turned out that we were just moments too late.  If we had not talked to the gate agent in SFO for so long we would have made it! The next option was to get a standby ticket for a nearly-full flight via Reno.  So be it.

The rest of the day was a flurry of running between gates, hoping really hard that we would get on the flight.  We got the last 2 seats on the first leg, meaning the last available middle seats that no one else wanted because the people on either side were so big that they couldn't put down the arm rests.  In Reno we made a mad dash for the Seattle flight, only to accidentally leave air side and have to go through security again.  We ended up having a 3 hour wait there (enough time to watch some soccer and calm down a little) and then finally got to Seattle at 4pm.  We dashed to the expo and registered, dashed to the hotel and checked in, and dashed to the pasta dinner and caught the last of the motivational speeches. 

I felt like I'd already run a marathon by the time we got back to the hotel room at 7:30pm but really that was all to come the next day...