Friday, January 27, 2017

The Tropical 5K & Miami Half Expo...

This year the race expo for the Tropical 5K & Miami Half (and full) marathon was held at the Marlins Park (baseball stadium). This is a new location for the event (at least I've never been to an expo held there before) and required some adjusting and a lot of patience. But it was nice to be there for the pre-race festivities of their 15th anniversary...

The expo started outside and then runners needed to make their way through the outside vendor section, through security, and up the ramp to the bib pick up area...
(picture of outside vendors taken from the ramp)

Once we were inside chaos ensued. The entire bib pick-up process was disorganized and they didn't have enough people giving directions and providing instructions on where to go... 

The 5K bib pick up area was all the way to the back (which we did not realize) and that line was really long. I was picking up bibs for the 5K and full marathon (for me) and the half marathon (for Kai) since that's what we registered for. I have no intention of running the full marathon but it was going to cost me money to downgrade and I had even less intention of paying more money to run less. Additionally, Kai hasn't trained and though she is registered for the half marathon she isn't running at all. But, just like changing the full, it costs money to defer her race to next year or make any changes and I'd have to pay for the difference in registration. So when I calculated it, I would be paying the same amount of money to change her registration that I paid when I registered her in the first place. That's insane; so I didn't do that either.  

So I paid the organizers for three events but I'm only running two and I will take my two medals for the events that I run. Tomorrow I'll bring home the 5K medal...

While at the expo I met up with Andy and Jani and then ran into my Jamaican running family...
photo cred: @Duncan  &  @Pacers

All of us are doing the half on Sunday except for Nikki (in picture below) who is doing the full...

We made our way around the expo and back outside to the #MiamiFamous wall of names where I eventually found my name...

And Kai's...

It's going to be a busy weekend, but I'm looking forward to two fun (and hopefully "fast") events... 

How is your running/training going?

Are you going to be #MiamiFamous this weekend?

What's your favorite booth/activity at race expos?

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