World's longest race report, part 1: pre race

**the focus on food will become clear later
Thur, 12/4/08: Left work at 4:45 for my 6:30pm flight to Pheonix. Grabbed a burrito at the airport and hoppend on a plane to get my marathon adventure started!
Saw Buddy1 for the first time in a year. SO GREAT!

Fri, 12/5/08: Bagel for breakfast then spent the day shopping and hanging out with my buddy and her girls. We got costco for lunch (which is my FAVE!) and hung out waiting for buddy2 to drive in from CA. We held dinner for her and by the time the tortilla soup was served I was FAMISHED.

Sat, 12/6/08: Up, grab a bagel and ready to head over to Tucson. Before we left I was saying goodbye to buddy1's girls. The 2 year old asked me where we were going. I told her that I was going to be running REALLY far the next day. She thought for a second and then said, "maybe you can borrow my mom's car!" Ah, from the mouths of babes comes true wisdom.

I bought myself and my 2 college buddies tickets to the pasta dinner where we were going to meet up with Speedy and her man. As per usual at these events the pasta dinner is an early bird special and started at 5pm. My friends wanted to skip lunch and wait until pasta time before eating; there was NO way I could make it that long so I insisted we stop and I grabbed a bagel and latte at the 'Bucks.

We found our hotel which was super nice, a great pool and sauna (which we did not use) and fire pits outside the bar area. Then it was time to see SpeedyDMD and meet her new beau. She looked great! And, even better, she felt good. Her foot wasn't hurting and now we could focus on the sheer terror of running a marathon.

We hit up the expo and chattered about our fueling regimines. I said these words "I think I have come to the conclusion that fueling is not as important as it seems, I did my 18miler without anything and felt fine."

Then came the pasta dinner. We LOVED our pasta dinner experience from last year so we went into it with high expectations.
IT ROCKED! GuySmiley, the M.C. was there again and there was a guest speaker. We sat at a table with a creepy old guy (we both thought so) and a creepy younger guy (although I think he was just hard of hearing or uninterested in our witty banter). Then we got showered with love and a door prize for being 1st time marathoners! There were games and questions and a lot of emphasis that on this course you MUST take it easy in the first half and try to have a negative split (cue music indicative of something important). As the place cleared out we got personal good wishes from some hottie Canadian runner boys and I thought, "too bad they'll be finished and home and showered before I get to the finish line...on 2nd thought, better that they don't see me post marathon."

My Buddies wanted to rush back to the hotel to do nothing which bummed me out and made me sit around being nervous. I pinned my bib on, attatched my timing chip and laid out my clothes. Then we decided to go sit around the cute fire pits at the hotel to kill time before I went to bed (SpeedyDMD slept at her own place). Sleep was good and I sprung out of bed at 4am, threw on my clothes and went to the lobby to wait for Speedy. But instead she called me sounding frantic! She lost her timing chip! She was freaked!

We SEARCHED her car and all her bags and I emailed the race director in vain hopes that she has a fancy pants phone too. But alas...nada! The line to park was a mile long and not moving so she dropped me off and I jogged (ugh...just shows I love her cause I was NOT planning on doing a warmup mile!) to find a race official. When I did he basically told me she was screwed. We boarded the bus, dejected. I was sad that Speedy was sad. We attempted to make the best of it and decided to run together and then my time would be her time. I was scared about this plan. She had finished the 1/2M 25minutes ahead of me the year before (I was ~2min/mile slower than her...hence her nickname) but I felt like we could give it a try and if she needed to leave me she was free.

At the start line we went to the stage and Pam Reed herself relived all of our stress by getting Speedy a new chip and a new perspective on the day.

We were ready!

We hit the porta-potties (where sadly I had performance anxiety) and dropped our gear.

As I ran I kept rewriting the tittle of my race report, so I will break the report down into those discreet segments: