She was here! She came back! It’s been far too long, but Stoutness returned to the ATL. It was a 6.5 hour drive that we made every few months back in the day, either myself to Cincinnati or her to Atlanta, and then…kids.
Yea, we both had a couple of ’em. They are wonderful, adorable, and sweet, but they sure do monopolize your time!
Enter getting back into shape. Enter running.
It’s something that has helped us stay in touch. We’ve trained for races and cheered each other on through the interwebs, but never have done a half together. We set our sights on The Hotlanta Half.
“It’s in June now, much easier than when Dave did it the first time in August 2014. Where he proceeded to run off the Marta train and puke everywhere! It can’t be THAT bad…” I said to convince her.
So we trained. I was really into Orange Theory this time around, so my short distances were fast, but man did I find that my long runs were SLOW. Of course the heat and humidity were a lot more severe that my fall races (I PR’d the Jeff Galloway half). I did however, feel fabulous. Man did Orange Theory do wonders on my body image.
Race weekend finally came, and so did the heat. We’d had some quality weather building up to the race, but in true Atlanta fashion, this one was going to be a scorcher.
Friday night we had a bit too much fun.
OLD LADY SNAPCHAT
Probably not my smartest idea, since I had a tennis match in the morning. I played horribly. Many apologies to my partner. Stoutness brought her sketch book though and got a good shot of me at the net with her creation.
GAME. SET. MATCH.
We headed back to my hood for an afternoon outside and a quality dinner. Chicken Tacos for all!
We forced ourselves to bed early, but not before laying out everything for the next day. The plan was to wake up with enough time for coffee and a quick breakfast. We didn’t want to drive over, but take Marta instead. Dave and the gals planned on heading out at the same time to cheer us on by Turner Field.
FLATBECCA & FLATKATIE
When we woke, we were on time, ready to roll, but the coffee did not do the trick for me. No worries, I thought, I can hit a port-a-potty at the race start.
OH MAN WAS I WRONG.
We passed a public restroom with a smallish line. We got into it, but we decided, hey let’s just get closer to the start and find the port-a-potty setup. As we saw people coming the opposite way to go to this restroom, we should have caught on. There were NO port-a-potties.
They weren’t delivered.
Look at Katie. She’s so smug. Her coffee did the trick before we left home. She’s a jerk.
So we waited in line a mile long for another public restroom near the Coke Museum, which ended up being the line for the Men’s room. The race at this point had already begun. We then heard rumblings that there were port-a-potties on the course.
Fuck it. Let’s go run.
When we ran through the start we were by ourselves, yet there was a steady stream of bathroom hopefuls behind us. Two miles in, HUZZAH, we got our bathroom break. It took forever, because this line was also a mile long. Thankfully, going into it, Katie and I had both determined this would not be a race for time. We were going to run it together and not drop each other, just simply have fun.
So here we are, mile two and I finally feel like a human again. Time to RUN! We wove our way around downtown towards Turner Field. We saw some cute cheerleaders (aka Dave and the gals) on Memorial, briefly said “hi” and made the loop back to see them again. Throwing care to the wind, because hey, our time was already shot with the bathroom break, we grabbed a quick photo.
We kept on rolling.
The hills kicked our asses.
Playing tennis the day before wrecked my feet a bit and I had to stop and re-tie them twice.
Hydration was fab.
We slogged along, but could still chat and have fun.
We took unflattering race photos.
We finished!
And in true BFF Fashion we celebrated!
The weekend was fabulous and I can’t wait to do it again. The plan is that I will run a full Marathon with this lady in the fall!
