Way Too Cool Weekend Recap

First, congrats to Brian, who finished with an official 50k pr of 8:08!  Great job, babe!

So we headed up to Roseville, Ca on Friday night.  Got checked into the hotel, no problem. Got a call from the hotel office manager saying the computers had crashed and they lost all the booking info, needed to re-enter everything. After giving him our billing address, I realized how dumb it was to give out any info on the phone and said my husband would be right down to the office to give the info in person.  And...yeah. It was a scam.  Panic ensued.  Now some scam person had our home address and knew we were not home but at the hotel.  What to do, go home? Drive back the 2 hours the morning before the race?  Stay put and worry about it all weekend??

Well, after talking with the office at the hotel and finding out it's a problem in the Sacramento area, hotels are being targeted by a scam being run out of Africa and or Asia, targeting people's credit info, and that they are aware of the problem and the police are involved, and that nobodies homes have been broken into following one of these calls...we called our home police department, explained what had happened, and they said they'd keep a car in our neighborhood.  So, we stayed put.

Race morning, no problems other than Brian forgetting his hand held water bottle and attempting for two seconds to convince me he didn't need to carry any water (he later said he drank more water this run than normal and would have been sunk w/no water). We bought just a regular water bottle, no hand strap at all, which he carried the whole time.  He was off and running at 8:10, we saw him just before the 8 mile mark, and then 7 hours later at the finish.  I'll link to his recap when he gets one up, but for now, here's some pictures from the weekend-

Brian and NTL, Allen, before the race started.

With a record crowd, they did a wave start this year, this was wave one. You really want to get where you want to be since all these runners will funnel onto single track trails.

 

 Killing time in a field the runners would soon be running through towards the end of the first 8 mile loop.

 There's Brian in red!

 The kids and Kona got some high fives.

 We had about 7 hours to kill now.

 That's your winner, Chris Vargo, and second place Alex Varner.  This was 7 miles into 31 miles...they finished just like this, with Chris still in front by only a few seconds.

 Interviews happening everywhere.

 We had some lunch, and let Kona out of the car for walks, read, drew, wandered, and then he was done.

 Above, I guess after running 31 miles you are allowed to not recognize your son and run right past him after he's been patiently waiting for a high-five for 7 hours. : )

 Everyone except for Brian was pretty sun burned.

 Sunday morning we headed out for some exploring around Coloma, Sutter's Mill, and Placerville.

 We went back to part of the trail Brian had run on Saturday along the American River. He was really kicking himself for not carrying his camera and getting no pictures of this beautiful run, so he was able to get a few shots.

 

Courthouse in Coloma, Ca.

 Then we went to Sutters Mill, where the very first gold was found that started the Gold Rush. There's a lot to explore there, many old buildings and whatnot. The kids completed some activities and earned nice Jr. Ranger badges.

 We had a great lunch at Mel's in Placerville.

 And then headed home......to discover if we had anything left in the house, and it was fine.

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Update : Brian has his race recap up here.