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Marathon Madness

(Yes, I technically only ran a half-marathon, but I like the alliteration, so I left it off)

This weekend was my half-marathon down in San Jose, and it led to all sorts of hi jinx. I actually had to drive down to San Jose twice, once to pick up my race packet, and once to actually run the race. They put on an expo from 9AM to 5PM on Saturday, and I was supposed to pick up my packet between those hours. Yes, you read that correctly: "supposed to."

I planned on picking up my packet sometime mid-morning, then driving to Mountain View to meet up with my friend for lunch. The first wrinkle to my plan was that I had some family obligations to deal with that morning. I didn't finish up with that until about 12:30PM, so I decided to switch up the plan. Instead, I drove to Mountain View first, and I'd pick up my packet after that. It's about a 30 minute drive to the convention center from Mountain View, so I figured I still had plenty of time to make it work.

Lunch was good, and I was glad to catch up with my friend. In fact, lunch was so good, we decided to extend the outing by grabbing dessert. By this point, it was 3:15PM, but that gave me 45 minutes to get dessert and make it back to my car. Plenty of time. However, we drove to Palo Alto, and we hit a ton of traffic. The UCLA-Stanford game was that afternoon, and we caught all of the people leaving the stadium. What's worse, they had blocked off city streets to account for the large number of pedestrians. This lady on a walker actually beat our car to the end of the block (though in our defense, she was deceivingly quick).

Anyhow, I didn't get back to my car until 4:15PM, so I had to rush to get to the convention center. Of course, given the way the afternoon was turning out, I hit traffic on the way there. Translation: I pulled up to the convention center at 4:55PM. It took me 10 minutes to park and run up to the exhibition hall, which meant that it was now past 5PM, and I did not yet have my packet in hand.

I asked around to see if there was any way I could still pick up my packet, and the first guy said something to the effect of, "5PM means 5PM sharp." Obviously, I was not a fan of that guy. The next guy, however, was much more helpful, and got on his walkie-talkie. Eventually, he figured out that some of the volunteers were still helping the "stragglers," so I took off running towards the kind volunteers. They were actually taking down their various posts, so no one knew where anything was anymore. As a result, I got more exercise than I expected, but I eventually found the right booth and got my packet.

Because I was so late, I didn't get a t-shirt. I also didn't get a wristband for my free post-run beer (a decision I would regret later). However, I had my race packet. It had taken a little bit of extra exercise, slightly elevated blood pressure, and some embarrassment, but I had my packet. I breathed a sigh of relief at that point. All that was left now was to actually run the race.

Incidentally, if you're looking for a moral to this story, I'd suggest that you should always keep track of sporting event schedules. Even if you absolutely hate sports, it'll be good to know when traffic might be a problem. And if you do hate sports, you're borderline lame, so keeping up with who's playing could net you some cool points.
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Comments

  1. StellaOctober 4, 2009 at 10:34 PM

    So I'm assuming that nothing amusing happened during the race since this post ends before the actual marathon. I'm suspicious...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sam ChangOctober 5, 2009 at 7:31 AM

    Well, *somebody* (two somebodies, actually) said my posts were too long, so I was going to put up a second one later. I was actually going to try to do it last night, but I got tired & went to bed instead.

    ReplyDelete

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