Phoenix is a different place, located in a state which, wisely, doesn't recognize or participate in daylight savings. There are a lot of anomalies here. First off, because of the daylight savings you never quite know if you are in mountain or pacific time. When Dave and I got here we got lost in an airport that doesn't have escalators that go up, or down on some levels. This makes things quite redundant when you have to go up a floor to get down to the ground floor. Maybe it's just easier to take the elevator. We asked at information if there was a shuttle going to the Days Inn in Phoenix, and after pulling out this massive book of hotel listings we were told that it didn't. This was really okay as we were just going to take a cab instead, but then the guy informed us that shuttles were available at door 3. The conversation went something like this, {Dave - "Hi we were wondering if there was a shuttle going to the Days Inn in Phoenix." Guy - "I'll check" (He checks his book) Guy - "Oh here it is, um no there is no shuttle." Dave - "Okay, thanks." Guy - "But you can get shuttles at door 3"} WHAT?!? 2 seconds ago he told us (definitively with his large binder of hotels) that there was no shuttle to the hotel and then adds that there are shuttles at door 3. Which do we believe? We took a cab.
The Days Inn that we stayed at was located at Thomas blvd and I-10. We went to check in and were assisted by an employee in training, who did a great job. The security and maintenance guy showed us to our room while highlighting the best strip clubs in the neighborhood for our entertainment. Our room was nice, complete with a fridge and microwave from
the 1980s, and a bathroom where the toilet lid had to be up for you to be able to shut the door. After getting settled in, hunger hit us and we went to the Denny's across the street to take in burgers and the local surroundings before returning to our hotel for the night.On Saturday we woke up and watch Shaun of the Dead while checking out info on packet pick-up at the expo center downtown. Randomly our smoke detector went off in our room and out of pure frustration, I dismantled it from the wall before it would stop. We called down to the front desk to ask about printing my confirmation page and to let them know about the detector. The worker said they'd ask about the printing and send maintenance upstairs to fix the detector. 45 minutes later, we went down to the empty front desk and found the worker hadn't done either. Oh well, we were still able to print my confirmation and they did send someone to fix the detector while we went out. Unfortunately we didn't exactly know where the expo center was and after walking an hour and a half to the downtown area we wandered around downtown Phoenix admiring the architecture and finding other racers in our exact predicament. We finally got directions from a local and made it to the expo center. After walking in we realized that yet again we were wrong and no expo center had we found. We almost accidentally went to a Harlem Globetrotters game instead. A few blocks later we did indeed find the Expo Center and realized that we were no longer in our respective "big cities" as people were actually waiting for crossing lights instead of just walking when it was clear.
The Expo center was a hive of activity as we checked into the hall getting out racing bibs, timing chips, race goodie bags, and then heading into the congregated mass of souvenirs, selling booths, and product promotion stands (a.k.a. freebie heaven). It was like any other convention in a exposition center. We stood in line after line of free samples of various food and drinks which consisted of our lunch. We also stood in a line reminiscent of the communist era either Russia or post-war depressed Germany, for loaves of bread being given by Orowheat. So lunch, 2 loaves of bread, 2 pairs of sunglasses, our race packets, and 2 hours later we were out of the expo center and out to explore downtown Phoenix.
Downtown Phoenix consists of about 4 square city blocks with sports arenas, art and convention centers, parking garages and several other tall anonymous building. There
were also several nude sculptures of females dancing that Dave took photos of {sidebar: Dave purchased a new Nikon camera to replace the one he lost on New Year's Eve.}. We found a shopping pavilion and walked through, deciding to stop in a Hooters for a beer and some food. I had never been to a Hooters before, and like a typical male, the eye candy appealed to me. Don't really understand why its called a family restaurant though. The Packers-Seahawks playoff game was on, so we spent a relaxing hour and a half eating boneless wings, fries, drinking a pitcher of beer and watching the game plus the waitresses. The Hooters slogan is absolutely true: Delightfully Tacky, Yet Unrefined. It was such a distractingly good time that I left my new digital camera on the table when we left. It wasn't until I wanted to take a sunset photo that I realized my err and hurried back to reclaim it. Needless to say we missed the sunset and walked the hour and a half back to our hotel.We needed to run for our scheduled training and went for a quick 2 mile run before ordering pizza and cheesy bread for an attempted "carbo-load". We managed to catch the end of the Patriots-Jaguars playoff game and watched the end of the 1975 "Death Race" with Sly Stalone before calling it a night at midnight.
Waking up Sunday morning at 5am, we got ready for our race and started walking to the start village. Unfortunately we made a wrong turn on McDowell St. and walked 15 Avenue blocks in the wrong direction. Dave walks fast too, I mean I have long legs and I still feel as though I'm power walking at times to keep up with him. It was a workout in and of itself before the race, one might say our warm-up. We did however see some additional local culture though as 2 prostitutes were soliciting on McDowell and 30 Ave. Dave was tempted to cheer as one apparently negotiated a sale and hopped in a white SUV, license plate # (just kidding), but he refrained in the long run. We finally realized our directional error, recorrected, and made it to the start village by 7:30am.
Bands were playing, people were standing in huge lines for the Port-o-Potties, food & drink were being given out. We headed to the UPS bag checks (UPS sponsored the race by transporting personal items in our race bags from Start to Finish lines) and dropped off our layers and cameras. Dave was in corral 22 and I was in corral 10, so we parted and warmed up and prepped on our own. I made use of the portable toilets again as my training taught me that I always had to go while running, so I should go before I run. I realized that for the next race, I really want to run with friends as it seems to be more fun and a completely different experience.
There were team groups and packs of friends, 3 Scottish - dressed guys from Braveheart complete with face paint and swords, and a myriad of other runners. My corral started and I ran... and ran... and ran... too fast at first averaging about 7 min miles for the first two miles. I slowed down though and was pacing at a 8.5 min miles at the 5k and 10k marks. I hit a wall at mile 8 and struggled all the way until mile 11, where I found a comfortable pace again. But by that time I was feeling sort of dead, and the last 2.5 miles had so many versions of "almost there" that I was sprinting and cursing alternately until the end of the race. The worst was around mile 13 where they had a man-made arch above the road with photographers taking photos of runners who thought they were crossing the finish line, only to see the 13 mile marker just beyond as their raised arms dropped in defeat that they weren't yet done. I know because I was one of those dejected runners. By the time I mustered the last of my strength to sprint the actual finish line, I felt like crying.Taking on water, recovering, and stretching I waited for Dave to cross the line and was elated to see him 25 minutes later. I offered a high five as he crossed and walked off the run. We then went to the medical tent and got ice bags strapped to our knees, returned our timing chips, and got photos taken. Then the food lines were hit and making it out of the "secure" area we stretched, got out bags from UPS and checked out the finish village. Not much happening there except selling of merchandise, like at the expo center. So we jumped a shuttle back to our hotel and I laid down for a second only to pass out for 10 minutes. Yeah, I was exhausted.
We showered, made phone calls, sent text messages, and checked our final official times on the Internet. Dave came in at 2:09:13 and I finished at 1:57:00. We both beat our goal times! Dave called a cab to head into Tempe where the close out concert was. When our cab pulled up, we met Bruce, our driver, who was eccentric and nice. He was so great that we got his cell number so we could call him the next day when we needed to go to the airport.
Downtown Tempe is much more trendy than Phoenix as it accommodate the college crowd. We settled on Hooter's again for burgers, wings, fries, and 2 pitchers of beer
to relax for about an hour before heading to Tempe River Park where Kool and The Gang closed out the Marathon activities. Lame at first, it turned out to be an awesome night with us ending in the front "pit" rocking out to some funk. We caught a cab back to our hotel and had another exceptional cab driver who filled us in on the "underworld" activities of Phoenix. He amazingly knew exactly where we were when we described our lost, prostitute-seeing adventures of the early morning. We joked about "drippy dick" and the price and quality of Phoenix's ladies of the night. He explained to us that, "Phoenix is a large orgy where one third of the people didn't know they were involved." All in all the cabs in Phoenix were a great experience even if the city was a bit lacking for being the 4th or 5th largest in the country.We planned on the hot tub, but exhaustion prevented that as sleep was most welcome after the long day. Monday morning I woke at 9 and puttered around showering and packing leisurely. We called Bruce again and checked out of our hotel and I got on a plane at the airport heading to Boston, leaving Dave at a Starbucks in the airport to read and write as he waited for his flight 6 hours later. My flight connected in Baltimore and the first leg found me stuck among a Jewish family in the back of the plane. I felt like the visitor at a family dinner who constantly has to pass the various dinner dishes back and forth as I was seated in between the two young teenage boys, because really who wants the middle seat? Minor chaos over missing books and the consumption of food kept the flight interesting and me involved. The other flight perk of this leg was the three infants in front and beside my seats. I love kids, but sleep was an impossibility as they screamed periodically. Lets just say the landing in Baltimore was somewhat of a relief.
The flight into Manchester was uneventful as I arrived at 11pm. Unfortunately though the shuttle to Boston didn't leave until midnight and didn't arrive in Boston until just after 1. With no public transportation running and a lack of cabs around, I walked from the South Station to Back Bay where I slept in an alley until 6am, when I could get into my office building to sleep for another two hours before starting work.
It was quite an adventure all around and I'm excited to run another race sometime in the near future. I think I want to run either the NYC or Boston Marathon at the end of the year if I can get in to either of those races. We'll see what happens. Cheers.
