Aurora's Blog

This expo was awesome mainly because of one booth.

I spent the majority of my time at the booth for the Marriott Downtown Waterfront (which coincidentally is where I’m staying).

Time out to talk about the hotel itself for one second. When I originally put Portland on the schedule, the plan was to stay with a friend out here. Recently, she got a new job and moved. No longer having a place to stay in Portland, I started searching for solutions.

I wrote tons of people on couchsurfing.org with no luck. I asked around on Facebook and nobody knew anyone I could crash with. An incredibly generous blog follower found out that I didn’t have a plan for a place to stay and paid for a hotel room for me – right by the finish line! It could not get any better than this. I’m extremely grateful to him!

Back to the expo, I met these really fun people at the booth. They say my “52 half marathons in 52 weeks shirt,” and started commenting on it. At the time, only Darrin and Elise were there. I found out that Elise recently had ACL surgery (and wanted to sign up for a running event to get motivated), and Darrin has never done a running event! Wouldn’t it be perfect if they signed up for one together?

I happened to come around a shift change, so after a couple of minutes, Curtis and Chris joined us. By the time I left the booth, they had all decided on a 5k that they’d run together on July 15th. Darrin gave me his business cards and told me I could check in and hassle him. I told them this was going on the internet, so they better do it now! I can’t wait to hear about their race!

I swung around other booths. There was this electronic massage contraption that I’d never seen before. I tried it out, but to me it didn’t feel good. It felt as though I was being mildly electrocuted every few seconds, but a girl next to me loved it.

Einstein Bros. Bagels had a booth where they gave out coupons for free bagels, and I spun their wheel and got yet another free bagel coupon. They also put “lip shmear” in the goodie bag! I am the driest person of all time, yet I never have lip balm. Basically, what I’m saying is Einstein Bros. Bagels rocks.

Since my knee had been bothering me a little, I decided to try that athletic tape stuff that I always see people getting at expos. It felt good at the expo, so we’ll see how it works out at the race.

After the expo, I met up with a lovely blog reader for lunch. (Shout out to Lawrence!) He had an infectious energy; it was great fun to meet him.

Race report coming soon!