Shamrock Marathon - March 2015 By Marcy Foster
On the way to Virginia Beach on Friday, in my car at least, we were talking about the tradition of writing race reports. What happened? Were we doing so many races that it seemed a bit much? Were we afraid to distract Tim from his duties in Djibouti with a silly race report? Were we too busy polishing our medals and spending the winnings( Deets )? Or, the real reason...no one is as funny as Chris Dettmar so we just wait to see if he will write one. Well, I waited 48 hours and I last saw Chris running west on the W&OD with Deets this morning at 6 am and figure they are somewhere in the Blue Ridge mountains by now so I will make a go of it and hope others will add their two cents!!
The house that the Sergey Travel Agency got for us was phenomenal. It rents for 11,000 per week in season, so you can imagine!!!
There was lots of food, hot tubbing with no incidents this time, at least above the water ... and late night games of "Tell us something about yourself that we don't know". Chris won hands down with his college streaking story, with BK a close second with his Nun Teacher beating his head against the wall and then getting fired, or promoted to Priest, we don't know.
We ate more and ran a little on Saturday, and a few headed back to the expo. Kelly would have hated the expo, no free stuff at all!!!
Adding to the Friday crew of Serge, Deedee, Chris, Tatiana, American Sherri, herein referred to as Sherri, Me, Luz, BK, Craig and Shari, along came Marlyssa and Virginia on Saturday afternoon. We missed Paul Hackley but he didn't feel good at the last minute. You owe us one Paul!!
We (sergey) cooked a wonderful pasta dinner up Saturday night and after 2 hours of discussing when we would have to get up Sunday am, we got to bed early.
We arrived plenty early for at least 4 potty breaks, and most of us lost each other by the time the gun went off.
Segey was the only one doing the full marathon so he got a ride to his later start, 8:30 by the Fishmans. Thanks God for Craigs great attitude of " I can't run right now but I came for the party!"
The wind was not as bad as last year and the course was so much shorter....oh ..maybe because many of us did the full last year. I decided to take DeeDees advice....start out miserable and try to hold on!!! Worked for me, but I am as sore as if I did the full!!!
Nothing compares to the feeling of crossing that finish line and then seeing all your best friends a few minutes later, everybody beaming and congratulating each other.
Sherri did a great job surviving my snoring and BK in the front seat with her both ways!!! She had to pretend there was a cup of HOT coffee on her dashboard, at the same time as not missing an exit or smacking BK for his driving advice.
Luz endured many short jokes, and is even in a picture coming through a tiny door at the tiki Bar in our back yard.
Chris ran a great race in spite of having DeeDee talk to him all through the night....or that's what SHE said....
Steve tried the hot tub again, and this time no funny noises came out of his mouth.
We celebrated Tashas 39th birthday on Saturday with a chocolate cake.
By far the high....really this time... was being there to watch Serge run a great marathon. Luz and I ran the last 100 yards with him, until we got ejected by some big guy at the finish line.
