It sure sounded fine back when I booked this super early morning flight out of LAX. I'm sure it was because it was the cheapest option. I got ready and left the house at about 2:25 am to arrive at the LAX Economy Parking structure at about 3:15 am. As of the late, the gate readers were not reading my license plate at either the entrance or the exit. I had to scan my QR code in order for the arm to go up.
LAX Economy Parking
EV Parking
Shuttle
I took the shuttle over to terminal 1. As soon as I got off of the shuttle, I headed up the escalator on the western end of the terminal for the TSA checkpoint. When I got up there, I was kind of surprised that it wasn't opened yet. Then I quickly remembered the government shutdown and these essential federal employees were having to work without being paid. I then went back downstairs and headed for the TSA checkpoint at the eastern end. There I joined the long queue. While waiting, I had a conversation with the couple ahead of me mainly because both were wearing Disney shirts. To my surprise, they weren't actually headed to WDW! They were going to St Louis, Missouri. Eventually, a TSA agent came by and told us that the other checkpoint was opened. At that point, there was reason for us to leave the line to head for the other.
Terminal 1
TSA security screening general queue
When I boarded the plane, I logged onto the WiFi and watched some NYC news on the short flight over to Phoenix Sky Harbor PHX Airport. Man, with some early elections for important positions coming up quickly, there was a shit ton of political ads!
LAX > PHX
Live inflight TV stream
Current mayor, Eric Adams, endorses Cuomo
So many political ads
The plane landed in Phoenix at just before 7 am. I had been receiving emails from McDonald's notifying me that I had reward points that were expiring soon. After using the restroom, I headed over to the McDonald's over by gate B20 to cash in my points. There wasn't much to choose from, so I ended up getting a large iced caramel coffee. I found an empty seat to drink my coffee as well as to charge up my old Pixel 2 that I use to watch TV and movies on flights.
Landed at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport
Cashed in rewards points for a free large iced caramel coffee
About a couple of hours later, I went over to the Starbucks that was next to gate B17 to get my second coffee. Per the usual, I placed my order on the mobile app. I almost balked when I saw that it was almost $10 for my usual grande blonde vanilla latte!
Almost $10 for my grande blonde vanilla latte!
Grande blonde vanilla latte
There was a bit of a delay with the next flight out to Washington Dulles IAD Airport. The delay wasn't too long and probably not bad considering those air traffic controllers were not being paid due to the continuing government shutdown. The plane landed in Washington-Dulles at about 6:30 pm.
Big ass fans!
PHX > IAD
More politics on CNN
After getting off of the plane and using the restroom, I started following the signs to head for the Washington Dulles Metro station. This was my time taking the silver line train into DC. The last time I flew into this airport, I still took the 5A MetroBus DC-Dulles line. I believe that line was eliminated in November of 2022. This was way more convenient and cheaper as it was only $6.75 from the airport all the way to Alexandria. While waiting on the platform, I had a conversation with a couple from England. It started off with me helping them out on which train to take. I took that train over to Rosslyn Metro station to switch over to a blue line train. I then took that train down to King St-Old Town Metro station. During that train ride, the timeshare had texted me for the ETA of my arrival. I replied, "about 8 pm."
Washington Dulles IAD Airport
Headed over to Metro Silver Line
From there, it was just a short walk over to the Club Wyndham Old Town Alexandria. A quick visit at the front desk had me assigned to unit #704. I was then directed to the concierge station as was the normal routine. However, here was where things were different. I believe they actually had brought in a new manager to take care of owners such as myself that had left scathing survey responses. Those surveys were definitely not anonymous. He even mentioned that it was marked on my account. He reassured me that the owner update or review would not involve any type of high pressure sales. It was to give me more information concerning the closing of 14 Wyndham properties at the end of the year and the introduction of the mobile app as the website would be phased out. We shall see how that goes. I remain skeptical and definitely won't be holding my breath. Once again, the incentive was a $100 Tango gift card. They took a $60 refundable deposit after I agreed to attending one at 8:30 am tomorrow. He told me to come talk to him if the whole owner review was unacceptable.
Club Wyndham Old Town Alexandria
World Series game 1, Blue Jays vs. Dodgers
After I dropped my bags off in my unit and used the restroom, I went back out to get something to eat at Bob & Edith's Diner. I found an empty booth and started things off with some black coffee. I then ordered their corned beef hash with eggs sunny side up, grits, and English muffin. I was kind of surprised that they didn't have the World Series game on one of their TVs. I kept an eye on the score line on my phone while I ate my food.
Late dinner at Bob & Edith's
Coffee
Corned beef hash with 2 eggs sunny side up, grits, and English muffin
After I finished my dinner and paid the bill, I went back to my room to catch the rest of the game. Snell kept the game tied at 2-2 through 5 innings. He then ran into trouble in the 6th inning where he couldn't get anyone out and loaded the bases. He was pulled for a reliever and the Blue Jays proceeded to score 9 runs! The Blue Jays took game 1 of the World Series with ease.
Dodgers got smoked for 9 runs in that 6th inning! Toronto takes game 1 pretty easily!
Saturday 10/25
As I am very much a morning person, I woke up pretty early. Early enough to see a beautiful sunrise. I got ready and headed over to the nearby Whole Foods Market to buy some drinks. I ended up buying a gallon of water before heading out. I then walked over to the Starbucks to order my usual grande blonde vanilla latte and earn some bonus stars. I took everything back to my room where I ate the 2 leftover white lotus mooncakes from my coworker with my coffee. Those mooncakes were terrible, but it was cheaper than having to go back out to get something else.
Beautiful sunrise view from my room
Whole Foods Market
1 Gallon of water
Starbucks
Grande blonde vanilla latte
Bonus stars!
Coffee with some leftover white lotus mooncake
When 8:30 am rolled around, I headed down to the lobby to attend my owner review. The guy at the concierge table walked me over to the other building across the entrance of the property. I was assigned to a pretty happy lady. After another owner and I were given a brief presentation by her, we split off. It would turn out that her fiancé would also be running the Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday. He must be a good runner as she told me that he was going to attempt to run about a 2:50 marathon. We never did go over the 14 properties that would be closing. Here's an update that I found on their website. Here's a YouTube short from TimeshareUsersGroup. This definitely does not look good for the the Club Wyndham side of the house for Travel & Leisure especially for those that are deeded owners. At the end of that hour, she asked if I wanted to see an offer sheet to which, I said no. I thought it was weird that she then handed me a paper review form on the spot and asked me to rate her with 5 stars out of 5. I was happy to give that to her because today's review was truly different especially for a Club Wyndham property.
With that out of the way, it was time for me to start heading to the race expo over at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. I walked over to the Eisenhower Ave Metro station to catch a free bus ride. Coach B ended up sitting next to me for the ride over. She was the Fox Creek High School Cross Country coach out in North Augusta, South Carolina. Since we had about the same time goal, I told her that I would keep an eye out for her. It would turn out that my friend, Marcia, was also taking the same bus for the expo. It is quite uncanny that we would always bump into each other at races without any prior planning!
Bus ride to the expo from Eisenhower Metro station
My friend, Marcia, was on the same bus
The queue to get into the race expo was quite long. Once we got down there, the bib pick-up was pretty easy. We just showed them our QR code and our ID, then we were directed to a specific booth. That was followed by picking up our long sleeve quarter zip race shirt. After we verified that our timing chip was working, then the chaos ensued. While the aisles for the vendor booths were congested, it still wasn't as bad as the official merchandise area! There was actually a line that had formed for the race jacket as participants were informed that a shipment was in route. I must say that the jacket was really nice looking, but I needed another jacket like I needed a hole in my head!
Long queue to get into expo
Down the escalator
Scanned in my QR code and was directed to booth #5
50th Anniversary MCM patch
Long sleeve ¼ zip race shirt
Back of race shirt
Participants name wall
Found my name
Heather!
6:05 pacers!
Armed Forces Series Challenge medal
Space Force 10 miler
US Space Force patch
Pre-paid bag to send in used running shoes
Once we made it out, we went our separate ways. I walked over to the National Harbor to go eat lunch at The Walrus Oyster & Ale House. I decided to come here solely based on the name of the restaurant! Since I was dining solo, I found an empty seat at the bar. I already knew what I wanted, but I still looked over the menu. I ordered the New England Cobb Salad. I must say that that was one of the best salads that I've ever had! Considering the ingredients used, the area, and the upscale type restaurant, it also wasn't overly pricey at $28.
The Walrus Oyster & Ale House
New England Cobb Salad
After paying the bill, I walked back to the Gaylord to catch a ride back to the Eisenhower Ave Metro station. There was still an extremely long line of people trying to get inside for the expo, so I cut inside the hotel to use the restroom before getting on the bus. Even will all of the people stationed there directing traffic, the bus was having a hard time getting out of there as there was just a ton of people everywhere!
On the walk back to my room, I stopped in at Whole Foods to buy a bottle of sports drink. For some reason, I keep forgetting that they only sell products that aren't full of artificial ingredients. They don't sell stuff like Gatorade or Powerade. I had to settle for their 365 version of a sports drink. I've never had it before, let alone for a marathon. We shall see how that goes tomorrow. Back at my room, I went through the expo stuff and laid out my flat runner for tomorrow's race.
365 sports drink
Fruit punch flavor
Flat runner
Dinner with my friends later in the evening was going to be at Founding Farmers. My friend texted me that they would getting to the restaurant a bit earlier to see if they could seat us earlier than the 6 pm reservation. I got ready and hopped on the Metro for a ride over to the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station. The restaurant was just a short walk from that station. Fortunately for us, they were able to seat us early. My friend ordered the spinach dip & corn tortilla chips to share. I ordered the steak frites with lemon garlic roasted broccoli. This was much better than that seared prime rib that I had the last time that we were here.
Dinner at Founding Farmers
Spinach dip & corn tortilla chips
Steak frites with lemon garlic roasted broccoli
Along the way over to the Metro station, one of our friends stopped in at the Captain Cookie & the Milk Man store. Then further down the road, she went into the Whole Foods Market for something else. Once we arrived at the station, we went our separate ways as they were all headed over to Rosslyn, while I needed to wait for a blue line train to get back to my place.
Back at my room, I caught game 2 of the World Series. After the very convincing and dominating win in game 1 by the Blue Jays, I was not hopeful that my Dodgers would have a chance to win. Thankfully, Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched so brilliantly. He was the first Dodgers pitcher to win back-to-back postseason complete games since Orel Hershiser back in 1988! He held the Blue Jays to only 4 hits and 1 run! That evened up the series with a game a piece heading to Los Angeles for 3 games.
Yamamoto pitched a complete game for the Dodgers to take game 2 and even up the series!
Sunday 10/26
For this year's race, they opened up the Metro system at 5 am to help get runners to the start line on time. There were already a bunch of runners at the platform when I got there to catch a ride. Everyone took that over to the Pentagon Metro station.
Catching an early morning ride on the Metro over to the Pentagon
After exiting the Metro station, it was that long walk over to the runners village. Once I got there and past bag check, I headed straight to the northern end of the parking lot near the mile 25 marker. There I found a spot on the curb to sit down. While waiting, I noticed that they had way more portapotties for this year. They were positioned back to back so lines were on both sides. I tried to meet up with a couple of my friends near the gear bag trucks, but I could not find them in time. I headed over to the grassy slope for the usual Marathon Maniacs pre-race photo.
Marathon Maniacs pre-race photo
The staging of the "corrals" was chaotic to say the least. Once I found the 4:15 pacers, I didn't move up any further. However, there were people that didn't have the correct colored bibs that kept moving forward. Handcycle/wheelchair participants started at 7:15 am, followed by duo teams at 7:17 am. Regular runners started at 7:20 am. I didn't cross the start line until 7:33 am.
4:15 pace group
This was my 4th marathon in 4 consecutive weekends, so I was definitely not coming into this race feeling fresh. However, after doing better than what I had expected last weekend at MDI, I decided to run by feel and go as comfortably fast as I could. I wanted to try and duplicate my course PR from last year. I was chugging along at a pretty even pace through the first 11 miles. However, I started to fatigue in the next 2 miles as I reached the halfway point.
1: 9:42
2: 9:23
3: 9:27
4: 9:00
5: 9:31
6: 9:14
7: 9:40
8: 9:27
9: 9:29
10: 9:26
11: 9:39
12: 9:58
13: 10:06
13.1: 1:54
1st half: 2:05:56
I pulled back on the pace a bit as I knew that I normally will struggle through the National Mall section of the course. Everything was going okay, but then the wheels really came off after reaching mile 18. Last year, I was able to power through the 14th St Bridge on my way down to Crystal City. However this year, I was hampered by leg cramps. During mile 22, we turned north to run a small little loop in the Pentagon parking lot before heading down to Crystal City. My friend pacing the 4:30 group passed me here. During the 24th mile, I spotted Coach B. I ran as much as I could to say hi to her. It was good to hear that she was having a good race. Unlike me, I was feeling cold and my hamstrings were taking turns cramping up. Eventually, I had to roll the arm sleeves back on to try and stay warm. I took most of mile 25 to try and recover. I was not a fan of the UnTapped syrup, but I took them to try and help with the cramping. Thankfully, I was able to recover enough to jog most of that final mile and the last charge up the hill for the finish line. During that final mile I chatted with a runner from Scotland who was filming his race experience.
14: 10:14
15: 10:42
16: 11:09
17: 10:19
18: 10:52
19: 12:28
20: 12:24
21: 14:31
22: 13:38
23: 13:26
24: 12:34
25: 14:14
26: 13:10
26.2: 5:53
2nd half: 2:43:40
~mile 21.5 Super Sabrina!
Finish: 4:49:36
Click here for my Garmin data.
Finished!
After crossing the finish line, we were given a bottle of water. Before I forgot to do so, I gave my beer ticket to that Scottish runner. He told me that American beer was like water. After receiving my finisher medal, I got to a somewhat open spot to take a quick selfie with the USMC War Memorial behind me. A marine there with a bullhorn was directing us to keep moving as we needed to make room for more finishers. We were like a slow moving herd of cattle. First we were given a red drawstring bag so we could hold everything. Then it was a banana and a snack box. That was followed by the large fleece finisher blanket and a Superman hooded poncho.
USMC War Memorial
Selfie
Finisher medal
Close up of finisher medal
Inside the medal
Back of finisher medal
Drawstring bag and post race goodies
Snack box contents
Large fleece finisher blanket
Superman finisher poncho
Back of poncho
When I finally got outside of the finisher chute, I asked a few marines if I could walk over to the Arlington Cemetery Metro station. They either didn't know or believed that I would need a special wristband for access. There were conflicting messages going out that either the Rosslyn Metro station was open or that it was closed and that we should head over to Court House Metro station on Clarendon Blvd. I started to head for Court House, but decided to give Rosslyn a quick look-see. It looked to be open so I got in the long line to enter the station. So apparently, it kept getting shut down and re-opened as there was just too many people down at the platforms! Eventually, I gave up and decided to duck into McDonald's and get a large iced caramel coffee while using the 99 cent app deal. When I came outside with my drink, I noticed that there were 3 very short lines of people waiting to take the elevator down into the station. There was a Metro employee there to help with directing the flow of people into and out of those 3 elevators. However, once I had gotten past the fare gates and onto the platform, people were just packed like sardines. I was able to follow a couple of people that knew better as we headed to the very end of the platform where the cars would have less riders.
Post race McDonald's iced caramel coffee
Everyone there crammed into that car to the point where there was barely any standing room. Eventually during that ride, some guy started bragging about how many blankets that he took. A fellow female finisher expressed her shock. The guy asked her how many she took. When she replied, "one," that douchebag then responded calling her an amateur. Wow, his parents must be such failures to have raised such an asshole. Back at my room, I sorted through all of the finisher stuff and opened up the snack box to eat something salty. Eventually, I took a shower and got cleaned up.
Later that evening, I headed down towards the Waterfront along King St to go eat dinner at Union Street Public House. Just like last year, since I was dining solo, I found an empty seat at the bar. It might have been the same exact seat. Before I even ordered anything, the bartender remembered me. I started things off with a Guinness 0. Then for my meal, I ordered their steak frites.
Guinness 0
Steak frites
Waterfront
King St
Monday 10/27
I tried to sleep in, but I still woke up pretty early. Since I felt wide awake, I decided to just start getting ready. I packed everything up at a leisurely pace. I eventually checked out of my unit at just before the 10 am check-out time. After dropping off the card keys and wristband at the front desk, I walked over to Bob & Edith's Diner for some breakfast. I'm a bit of a creature of habit, so once again, I ordered the corned beef hash with 2 eggs sunny side up and coffee. However, this time I got it with hash brown and toast.
Texas Pete "Hot" Sauace
Corned beef hash with 2 eggs sunny side up, hash browns, and white toast
After paying the bill and using their restroom, I headed over to Whole Foods Market to buy some snacks before heading to the airport. I ended up buying a box of Classic Multi-Grain Crunch Master with sea salt.
Box of Classic Multi-Grain Crunch Master with sea salt
My flight home wasn't until later in the evening. I wanted to pass the time by watching a movie, but nothing interesting was playing. I wasn't in the mood for more walking around, so I decided to head to the airport. I hopped on the Metro and got off at Reagan Washington National DCA Airport Metro station as my flight home was out of DCA. After exiting the station, I headed south for terminal 1. I found a vacant seat near the TSA checkpoint where I hunkered down for the long wait. After finishing off the box of crackers and the remaining bottle of water that I had on me, I decided to go through the checkpoint and wait near the gates.
Washington Reagan National Metro station
Prior to TSA checkpoint
Terminal 1
As it got closer to the boarding time for my flight, I ended up having a good conversation with Chad from Chicago. Him and his wife seemed to be traveling a bit to run all of the World Marathon Majors. We even talked a bit about the government shutdown and politics in general. My flight from DCA to Austin-Bergstrom AUS Airport kept getting delayed, but when we were finally boarding, it looked as if I could still make my connection. On the flight, I was able to watch game 3 of the World Series.
World Series, game 3
DCA > AUS
The plane landed at AUS with very little time to spare. Even though a 99 year old lady just had to get off of the plane first, it was enough time for me to walk straight onto my next flight into LAX. I was in the A boarding group and was able to board just ahead of the B31-60 group. Thankfully, that plane was parked in the next gate over. Once I found an empty seat, I continued watching game 3. Shohei Ohtani was able to tie up the game in the bottom of the 7th with a homerun. From there on, it would eventually turn into a marathon baseball game.
Shohei ties it up with a solo HR!
AUS > LAX
After landing at LAX and getting off of the plane, I was very much tempted to hang around and catch the rest of the game. However, I was really tired and not sure how long the game was going to continue! I continued on and waited for a shuttle ride back to my car. Unfortunately, these exit readers were still reading my license plate incorrectly. Now, it wanted $1400 for me to exit. The employee that was stationed there asked for my pre-paid confirmation number and got that straightened out with the help that was on the other end of the coms. Shortly after leaving the parking structure, I got a notification that the Dodgers had won in 18 innings with a walk off HR by Freddie Freeman! The Dodgers go up 2-1 in the series.
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