Shortly after getting back from my morning walk, I grabbed my stuff and hopped in the car for my drive out to Mesa, AZ. The first leg of this road trip brought me out to the Tesla Supercharger station in Indio. After pulling into a charging stall and plugging in the car for a charge, I walked over to the nearby McDonald's to get some breakfast. It was one of those rare occasions where I didn't find a mobile app deal that I could use. I ended up ordering a Sausage McMuffin with egg meal.
Tesla Supercharger Indio, CA
Sausage McMuffin with egg meal
After I was done with my food, I used their restroom before heading back to the car. Once the car was finished charging, it was time to get back on the road. The second leg took me out to the Tesla Supercharger station in Ehrenberg. After plugging in the car for a charge, I walked over to the Flying J to use their restroom. I bought 2 bottles of Bodyarmor for $5 before returning to the car.
Tesla Supercharger Ehrenberg, AZ
After the car finished charging, I hopped back on the 10 freeway to continue my travel east. The third leg brought me out to the Tesla Supercharger in Buckeye. It was about 3 pm local time which was 1 hour ahead of CA. Normally, if I eat breakfast then I would skip lunch. However, with a marathon tomorrow, I figured that I should eat 3 meals today. Using the buy 1 quarter pounder with cheese and get a second one for 29 cents deal, I placed my order on the mobile app and walked across the street to eat at McDonald's.
Tesla Supercharger Buckeye, AZ
Quarter pounder with cheese x2
The charging session took about an hour. I wanted to get a full charge so that I don't have to make another charging stop in the Phoenix area. The car navigation had me exit 202 E at Alma School Rd for the Mesa Riverview shopping center. I headed south and then a right turn at Bass Pro Dr. I got to see the mile markers for mile 13 and 26. The road was blocked up ahead for tomorrow's finish line, so I turned right into the parking lot near Cinemark. I went and parked as far west as I could. Then I walked over to the packet pick-up location which was about halfway over to Bass Pro Shops.
This race was recently acquired by Revel. As I have run several of their races, the layout of the expo was very familiar and well organized. After I picked up my bib, I went over to the participants name wall to find my name. I then went over to the other section of the expo to pick up my race shirt. I was also given a pair of socks.
Expo
Bib pick-up
Participants name wall
Found my name
Race shirt
Back of race shirt
Expo haul
After I was done with the expo, I headed back to my car, and drove down to Gilbert to meet up with my friends for dinner at the Culinary Dropout. My friend that organized the dinner knew the area pretty well. She directed us to park in the parking structure off of Vaughn Ave. Just as I was taking a picture of where I parked, my friends saw me. We all arrived at about the same time.
Where I parked
After we were seated, I looked over the menu. Prior to this trip, I had looked over their menu online. I was pretty much set on ordering their steak frites. For my beverage, I went with an iced tea. My friend ordered the Brussels sprouts to share with everyone. The popular item at our table was the meatloaf. I do like a good meatloaf, so I will have to give that a try on my next trip. Everything that I ate was good, so there definitely will be a return visit. Only minor complaint was that service was slow, but it was understandable since our waitress was also taking care of a rather large party.
Iced tea
Brussels sprouts
Steak frites
After we settled our bill and walked back to our cars, we went our separate ways. I drove over to the Ramada in Tempe located just south of the Arizona Mills Mall on Baseline Rd. When I booked my reservation, it was for a room with 1 king bed. During check-in, the guy asked if I was okay with 2 queen beds instead. I told him that that was fine and I was assigned room #329. Along the way to my room, I noticed that the windows for one of the rooms was boarded up. Not a very comforting sight to see. Thankfully, I found my room to be relatively clean. One of the first things that I noticed was that the provided cups were not wrapped. I'll have to use my own bottles. Also the TV wasn't working. Luckily it was a simple fix. I only had to reboot the WiFi Gateway that was attached to the back of the TV.
Not a very comforting sight to see!
Needed to reboot the WiFi gateway for the TV to work
Temple of Heaven, Beijing
Beijing National Stadium
Zhengyang Gate, Beijing
Bob's Burgers
Fancy Contour voice remote
I laid out my flat runner for tomorrow's marathon. It was somewhat hard to plan what to wear as it was going to be chilly at the start, but quite warm before the race was over. I then took a shower before calling it a night.
Flat runner
Saturday 2/12
I did not sleep well at all. I kept waking up all throughout the night. I gave up trying to sleep at about 2 am. That was close enough to when I was planning to get up. I got ready and left my room shortly after 3 am. For the drive over, I took 60 east to the 101 north, then connected to 202 east. I exited at Dobson Rd. The signs had me turn right at Cubs Way and an immediate right at Riverview Auto Dr. There were people there directing me right into the dirt gravel. I was maybe the 5th car there. I relaxed a bit in the car before going outside to get my stuff in order. I then headed over to the bus pick-up location at the northern end of the lot on Riverview Auto Dr. I was on one of the very first buses. The buses that they used were those uncomfortable elementary school buses with those tiny seats. They are definitely not designed for adults. I'm only about 5' 8" and I was crammed in there. The guy next to me was at least 6 feet tall. He could barely get his legs in there!
Shuttle to the start
Time to get off the bus
After getting off of the bus, I went to use one of the portapotties. There were no lines to use one as there were so many of them. After taking care of business, I hung out underneath one of the heat lamps. I ended up striking up a conversation with a guy from New York because I saw that he was wearing a Dashing Whippets Running Team cap. The only person that I know that was in that running club was Kino. I'm pretty sure he no longer runs. Just prior to the start of the race, we gathered as many Marathon Maniacs as we could by the start line to take the customary pre-race photo.
Many many portapotties
Race announcers/stand-up comedians
Marathon Maniacs
Ready to run!
Lorinda
The race started shortly after 6:30 am. The sky was still dark as they shot off some fireworks. I started the race with my friend. We took it relatively easy in the starting miles. She was planning to speed up and I was just trying to maintain the pace for however long I could manage. It was pretty cool to see the sunrise. Once we split up, I continued to run in the vicinity of the 3:50 pacer.
I fell off pace when the course had some inclines. I was okay with that as I was running by effort. Unfortunately, I started experiencing hip pain during mile 12. I slowed the pace down and had to pay extra attention to avoid road camber. Eventually the discomfort went away, but then I started dealing with leg cramps after mile 17. If my friend hadn't caught up to me, I'd probably walked a lot more. We would leapfrog each other, but we also had stretches where we plodded along together. Misery surely does love company!
Fast Eddie
Finish: 4:40:59
Click here for my Garmin data.
Click here for my personalized highlight video.
I had enough in my legs for a quick dash to the finish line during the final stretch. Unfortunately, I left my friend behind in that final stretch. Although, I crossed the finish line ahead of her, she still beat me by chip timing. In addition to the finisher medal, we received a cold wet towel for some relief from the warm weather.
Finish line
Finisher medal
As I continued down the finisher chute, I got a bottle of water and chocolate milk. I also bumped into my friends from San Diego. They ran better races than me and had passed me before we reached the halfway point. After we got some Creamies ice cream, we headed over to the results tent to get our race results. Receiving a results printout is one of the cool things with a Revel race.
Post race drinks
Creamies ice cream
Getting race results
Race results printout
I finally made my way over to the nearby Chick-fil-A to meet up with my local AZ friend for lunch. It would turn out that the dining area was not open and they were not taking walk-up orders. You either had to go through the drive-thru or place your order on the mobile app. I ended up buying my friend's lunch as well since he's always treating me to steaks. My friend got a table outside as I waited for our food to come out. There was a bit of a confusion as there was an order for Emily. I thought they were misreading my name again! :)
Cobb salad with grilled nuggets, a cup of tortilla soup, and a frosted lemonade
After we were done with our food, we went our separate ways. From there, I walked back to my car. By the time I got back to my room, I was feeling pretty wiped out. Eventually, I got cleaned up and passed out while laying on the bed. My friends invited me to go eat dinner, but I had to pass. After a few hours of lounging around, I did walk over to the nearby McDonald's to pick up dinner. There was a bunch of sketchy people hanging out by the bus stop in front of the McDonald's. Thankfully, I was not accosted. I used the buy 1 quarter pounder with cheese, get 1 free deal on the mobile app. I added a Happy Meal because it was Stitch themed. While waiting for my food, I listened to the employees talk about which of them were alive when the Berlin Wall came down. It was pretty amusing to eavesdrop on their conversation. I took my food up to my room, but the key did not work. I'm guessing the employee that checked me in had programmed my key for only 1 night, so I had to go back down to the front desk to get it reactivated. As I was washing my hands before eating my food, I saw that my eyes were bloodshot. I need some rest, ASAP!
QPC x2 and Happy Meal
Sunday 2/13
I was dragging a bit this morning to get ready. I ended up catching the start of the Spurs v. Wolves match as I packed up my stuff for the drive home. I kind of wished that I had missed it as the Spurs gave up an early goal. Their defense was so sloppy! I seriously didn't think that they could do any worse than having an somewhat injured Eric Dier play central defense!
Spurs v. Wolves
I was originally planning to leave by 7 am. I didn't leave until about 7:20 am. As I made a right turn out of the parking lot and then made my way immediately over to the left turn lane to make a u-turn, I noticed that there was a girl on a cellphone standing in the median. Once I got a green light, I made the u-turn and saw that her car had smashed into a huge rock in the median. I'm guessing that she fell asleep at the wheel. That's a bummer. The car looked like a total loss.
For my trip back home, my first stop was at the Tesla Supercharger in Buckeye. As I was pulling into the charging stall, I overshot a little bit. I saw that there was a car waiting to get into the Carl's Jr drive-thru. Instead of doing a bunch of turns to get into the spot, I circled around to let that car through. After plugging the car in for a charge, I walked over to the McDonald's to get breakfast. I used the buy 1, get 1 free deal to get 2 sausage McMuffin with egg sandwiches and added a medium coffee for $1.
Tesla Supercharger Buckeye, AZ
Sausage McMuffin with egg x2 and coffee
My second stop brought me out to the Tesla Supercharger in Ehrenberg. Originally, I had thought about going to Quartzsite to charge the car, but I had been reading more reviews saying that that adjacent Carl's Jr had started to restrict the usage of their restrooms to customers only. I had enough charge so I headed to Ehrenberg. Per the usual, I stopped in the Flying J to use their restroom and purchased 2 bottles of Bodyarmor for $5.
Tesla Supercharger Ehrenberg, AZ
My third and final stop brought me out to the Tesla Supercharger in Indio. I arrived shortly after 11 am and all of the stalls were taken. I had to wait a bit for a stall to open up. Per the usual, after plugging in, I walked over to McDonald's to get lunch. I used the buy 1 double cheeseburger, get 1 for 29 cents deal. While waiting for my food, there was a lady ordering a "Big Mac" where she was telling them to hold the meat and the cheese. The girl taking the order looked super confused and asked if she wanted the onions and lettuce.
Tesla Supercharger Indio, CA
Double cheeseburger x2
I finished my 2 burgers, used their restroom, and went back to the car to wait for it to finish charging. I was done with the charging at just before noon. The final stretch took about 1 hour and 40 minutes to reach home. I will have to do this same drive next weekend for the Lost Dutchman Half Marathon.
No comments:
Post a Comment