Arland's first marathon

Tulsa... wow what a whirlwind weekend. This weekend for me was all about Arland and all of our running friends who made the trip to Tulsa.
The weekend started on Friday for us. Kelly came over to our house a little after 9:00 and after rearranging his suitcase's yes plural for about the 5th time we were ready to go when she got here. Kelly is really just such a fun person, we laughed and talked all the way to Tulsa, I swear those 5 hours just flew by. We even let Arland get in a few words, although not very many. At one point we were even text messaging each other while we were in the same vehicle. Actually we were just testing out our phones, but it struck me as funny.
We made our first stop fairly early on in the trip, but we just had to stop at Starbuck's in Conway. Good thing we did because we never saw another Starbucks the rest of the weekend. We had decided we would share one of the baked goodies, but once we got inside it was too hard to decide so we each got one and then we shared, and yes we even shared a little bit with Arland. I have to say the Pumpkin scones at Starbuck's were VERY good! I learned that Kelly and I share a love for all things cream cheese!!

If you asked me to describe Tulsa in one word it would be "construction" I swear every where you looked the roads were under construction, and then when we get to the exit for our hotel... no exit! Ummmm ok now what. Luckily we were able to just get off at the next exit and loop back around, this was a reaccuring theme for our drives while in Tulsa. Luckily we had Arland and he is a great driver although a little slow and a great navigator.
After checking in at the Hotel we made our way to the Expo. More confusion and closed exits, but once again Arland got us exactly where we needed to be. The Expo was very dissapointing, I was really looking forward to the girl from "spibelts" to be there but nope she wasn't. I was planning on buying a few as stocking stuffers. Oh well the nice techinical short sleeve running shirt kind of made up for it.
I guess after you go to the big grandaddy expo of them all Chicago the rest are all going to be a dissapointment.
It was still fun and it was Kelly's first expo so it was nice walking around with her. That first day we each got a new Tulsa Fleet Feet long sleeve running shirt and a few other goodies.
After the Expo we went back to the hotel and waited for Brenda, Vicki and Kim to arrive. Paulette was already at the hotel but we didn't see her until the others arrived. We were actually staying in Sand Springs which is a little town just outside of Tulsa, maybe a 10 minute drive. Our hotel was nice but there really was nothing else in town. Brenda made me aware an hour or so before they arrived that it was our job to find somplace for dinner and it needed to be somewhere we had never eaten before. I mentioned that the only restaurant we had seen besides Mexican was Western Sizzlin... well that was met with a lot of groans. So I spent the next hour or so stressing over where to go for dinner. In the meantime Arland,Kelly and I are starving. We never had lunch and at that point we were ready to eat at the biker bar next door to the hotel!! Luckily when they all arrived they were tired and hungry didn't care where we ate, so Western Sizzlin it was. It really ended up being a great choice, Vicki likes their hamburgers, and the rest of us were able to find plenty of good things to eat at the salad bar.
After dinner we headed to the "Big K" for a few supplies, when we got back to the hotel I called Brenda to see what they were up to. They had already put on their P.J's and were down for the night. Kelly and Kim came over to our room and us girls all stretched out on the super comfy king size bed and watched t.v.
Men in Trees, Friday night Lights, and Las Vegas.
Soon after it was lights out... oh I almost forgot, there was a wrestling tournament at the convention center where the Expo was held. I think half of them were staying at our hotel. Between the wrestlers, and the football players our hotel was packed to the gills with rambunctious little boys!! While we were watching t.v. they were pretty rowdy out in the halls, and I just knew it was going to interfere with our sleep, but luckily just before we were ready for bed I noticed it was quiet out in the halls. I guess they needed their rest as much as we did.

Saturday morning we all met in the lobby for breakfast and then Kim, Kelly Brenda, Arland and I headed out for our Ryan Shay memorial run at 9:00am. We did not do 5.5 miles but we we talked about Ryan and I was thinking of him during our run. Arland only wanted 2 miles so he turned around at 1 mile and the rest of us continued on for another 1/2 mile before we turned around. It was an easy pace, but the biscuist and gravy I had for breakfast was talking to me the whole time we were out there, luckily it was all talk and no action!!!
Vicki and Paulette had also joined us but they only wanted to walk. Sand Springs might not have had any Starbucks' or any coffee places, but they have a very nice running/biking trail and it was very close to our hotel so lucked out on having a great place for our Ryan Shay run.

We decided we would go ahead and go to the Expo and not wait for the rest of the Cabot group. We would just meet them there.
Arland, Kelly and I already had our race packets so we just roamed around hoping that maybe some new vendors had shown up for the second day. Still pretty much the same ol, same ol. BUT Kelly and I did find some great Asic's running pants, I thought we were going to have to fight over them. It looked like there was only one pair of medium left. But luckily our friendship was spared when I spotted a second medium pair. Kim also scoped out some socks for us that were 1/2 off so we each got a pair, or I should say I got a pair, Kim might have purchased more than that... she has a sock fetish so who knows.

We wandered around waiting and waiting for the rest of the group. We thought maybe we would all have lunch together somewhere. We started getting worried that maybe they had gotten lost, so someone called, they weren't far away, but they had stopped at Subway. We had all had one of those big pretzels earlier to tide us over till lunch... turns out they had to last us until dinner! I was having dejavu from the day before. We decided to go back to the hotel, we all went to our own rooms, and I took a little snooze while Arland got online.
OK... well I guess I'll have to continue this tomorrow, it is already 10:00 and I planned on going to bed early tonight!!