Early Friday morning, my parents ritually drove me to the airport to catch my flight for my first visit to Colorado. Landing a few hours later, I was anxiously excited to see my friend and hostess for the weekend, Carrie. Little did I know, the Denver airport would be quite the trippy situation around which to maneuver. Finding ground transportation was an interesting task. First of all, you had to go down an escalator. Okay, yes that's normal for an airport. But it doesn't change the fact that I hate down escalators. Have you ever seen Elf? How Buddy the Elf is both perplexed and afraid of the moving staircase? Now have you ever seen Kristen Stewart speak publicly? It's awkward and fearful. Combine the two and you have me facing a downward escalator. I let others pass and normally take a few moments to hop on board. Next, I had to get on a tram. It reminded me of the El in Chicago, but much cleaner and most of the people onboard seemed to have homes. Then, up an escalator...back down a different one only to find out I was on the wrong side of the airport because there's an East and West side for ground transportation pick up. Had I known that I would've packed my compass. So back up the escalator, directly across the airport and down another moving torture chamber also called an escalator, I found Carrie Barker. Not to be confused with Carrie Bradshaw. Carrie Barker has much better taste in avoiding belly shirts, frizzy hair and ugly men.
Carrie was awaiting in her sweet, new ride. This little gal pal rearranged her work week to make sure she could spend all of Friday with me. (I also learned that she in fact planned on devoting her entire weekend to hanging out with me and playing tour guide. She was seriously THE BEST). We headed to a hip, modern and Denver-local breakfast joint for brunch called Snooze. Picture The Jetsons' furniture mixed with organic greens and you've got Snooze. Popular by demand, we had to wait but it was definitely worth it and we had plenty of catching up to do. Toshimoto, our waiter who disclaimed that wasn't his real name (Really? Could've fooled me), steered us away from my go-to breakfast order of an omelette or veggie scrambler and in the direction of the best breakfast I've ever eaten. Snooze allows you to do half portions so I went with a Caprese Benedict and a massive chocolate chip pancake topped with chocolate, carmel and other delicious fattiness that I'm sure went straight to my thighs that were to carry me 13.1 miles just two days later. If my arteries had closed up after that meal, it would've been well worth it. (Okay, that's an exaggeration). But Toshimoto was awesome, even though every time I looked at him I thought of my 4th grade Tomagatchi pet.
Post brunch, we headed to Carrie's place just south of Denver. Decorated in all shades of elegant purples, Carrie's apartment was both charming and welcoming with an array of mountains in sight. Carrie finished up some work as I watched early episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians (pre-wedding and pre-divorce episodes, of course. I'm talking early episodes where they still had name captions, like "Kim" when they spoke because no one knew who these socialites were. Or knew how big her ass was yet.) From there, we ventured to downtown Denver to the Convention Center to pick up my race packet. Prior to arriving in Denver, my friend Tony (who was also Denver born and raised) had scared the shit out of me about the altitude. When I told him I was running a half marathon there after a weekend in Vegas and I would only be there two days before the race (leaving very little time to adjust to the mile high air), he basically gave me a look of "You're screwed" and directed me to drink 3x as much water as I normally do. Keeping that in mind, the first thing I had to do when we arrived downtown was race to the bathroom in the Convention Center. (I continued to do this the entire weekend as I had engulfed myself in about 2 gallons of water every day leading up to my arrival). Inside the expo, the woman who handed me my race packet gave me the same look as Tony did when she saw my license was from out of state. When I told her I hadn't felt any altitude symptoms she proceeded to warn me about her constant headaches and bloody noses. At that point I actually was worried I'd get a bloody nose during my race since I tend to get them at more than interesting times.
The great thing about going to the expo with Carrie was that she became equally enthralled with the running culture as me as we collected free snacks, including tomatoes. Yes, someone was passing out baby tomatoes at the expo. And yes, I ate them. We spent a good amount of time at the expo as I eyed some running sunglasses. Now, normally when I see runners in those shades I think they look like a douche. Or a lesbian. Not that there's anything wrong with those two types of people, but I just don't want to look like either. But Carrie warned me at how piercing the Denver rays could be. But risking I'd look like a sporty Ryan Seacrest, I veered away from the sunglasses and toward the Brooks station. Carrie, too, sports Brooks Adrenaline and upon learning that we were both avid Brooks customers, a Brooks worker willingly snapped a photo for us. We voiced a thank you but inside I was screaming, "TELL ME HOW YOU GOT YOUR JOB. IHATEYOUBECAUSEIMSOENVIOUSKBYESTRANGER!"
Post expo, Carrie played tour guide to the city of Denver. It's a lively city with plenty of people roaming the streets and buildings towering above. We made our way to I guess what would be considered a "main" street (as I'm forgetting its actual name) that is lined with shops and restaurants, bars and boutiques. The best part of all is that main street is a pedestrian mall for blocks upon blocks. That feature gave it a darling charm and calmed the traditional hustle and bustle of a normal city street. We walked down the bricked mall making our way to their old Union Station that possesses a lot of character architecturally. We stopped in a quaint, traditional bookshop reminiscent of You've Got Mail so I was quick to look for Meg Ryan behind the counter. (By the way, if anyone wants to let me know what the hell happened to her, and Helen Hunt for that matter, feel free to write me.) In a world of super-sized department stores and online distributors it was refreshing to see such a shop in the middle of a big city with plenty of foot traffic. Within the books there were even recommendation cards from the workers, almost an old fashioned Yelp.com. We finally strolled up another street dazzled with tea lights strung between old fashioned clocks that was home to some very unique (and pricey!) boutiques. Our favorite had to have been the hat shop. It was literally a shop filled with hats; and no, not trashy baseball caps like Lids in Yorktown Mall. Instead, it was Charlie Chaplin meets Kate Middleton hats that could make anyone look instantly stylish and sophisticated. For about $120.
Making our way back to the car, I snagged some pictures of the large blue bear that "leaned" against the glass Convention Center. I'm not exactly sure its purpose but Carrie said it was a touristy-thing to capture, much like The Bean in Chicago. It's amazing how a city can make any ordinary object King Kong sized and people stare at it like a child looking at a shiny object. It was cool, but in essence it looks like a huge ploy-doh Berenstain Bear. We were stopped by a couple women representing Dodge. Dodge is always a key sponsor of the Rock 'N Roll Marathon Series so it was no surprise they were staked right outside the Expo center. In true human instinct, we initially said no to their offer to test drive one of their rides. But as any good sales person knows, people have to say "no" before they say yes. Well, then came our yes. But it was only after they told us that Dodge would donate $20 to a charity of our choice just for taking a ride around the block. Rough life, riding a 2012 Fiat for breast cancer. After a brief survey and a breathalyzer, we hopped in the mini ride and cruised around town. We tested the convertible version; for being such a small car it actually felt quite roomy. So I didn't feel half as dumb as I did when I rocked the Chevy Aveo in San Diego. Plus, the Fiat did retro right and retro has to be done right unless you want to look like a shithole Goodwill store. The ride was smooth and the Dodge lady that joined us chatted with me about the 50 half and full marathon combo she did in two years. Seriously, my 13 halves in 13 months is starting to look like amateur hour if I keep meeting people like that.
After our test drive, we hopped back in Carrie's car and drove up to Boulder to visit her boyfriend Brice. I hadn't seen Brice since we graduated from college either and he's a great guy who can pull off a fierce bow tie so I was excited to see him. The three of us roamed the streets of Boulder, a typical but neat college town, in search of any restaurant that had a wait time of less than 45 minutes. When that prerequisite failed, we opted for a bar/grill nearby to take shelter from the chilly evening. Finally seated we enjoyed a tasty meal with good company. I've gotten really used to this whole 3rd wheel concept so I felt completely normal on this tricycle date (...but I will say I prefer being a back wheel). After dinner, we went into this fun vintage shop that was on Pearl Street, an awesome avenue of vendors and art. Any kid that goes to CU really lucked out with their college town experience, if you ask me. Talk about a tight town. And the tight town ended our Friday full of adventures.
Saturday I woke up to Carrie practically shaking me exclaiming, "it snowed last night! It snowed last night!" like a little tot on Christmas morning. October 8th: snow in Denver; October 8th: 68 and sunny in Chicago. Mother Nature is such a jokester sometimes. And by jokester, I mean huge, raging bitch. With the outside world just looking cold, Carrie and I spent the majority of the day curled under blankets, relaxing on the couch. A perfect lazy Saturday. Early afternoon, we pulled ourselves together to go for a little run; I really wanted to see how my lungs would tango with the highly-gossiped altitude. We headed to Washington Park, home to a lovely flurry-paved running path in the heart of Denver. Carrie, being a Mizzou cheerleader alum and a generally athletic gal, had no issue keeping up with my steady trot. The air was thick and brisk and I'd be lying if I said it didn't burn to breath. But for the most part, the little effect the altitude appeared to have on me was reassuring for my next day race.
Once showered, Whole Foods warmed us with their soup. It was the largest Whole Foods I had ever seen: a palace for the nutrition obsessed. I'm actually beginning to think that the size of Whole Foods markets is in direct proportion to the health of the city in which it dwells. For example, Denver is known as the healthiest city in America- thus, the Whole Foods was like a mini amusement park. Chicago is known as a fairly fat city (thanks to people like me who snack on hot dogs on the reg)- thus, the Whole Foods are comparably small. Which makes me believe that Alabama and Mississippi must have zero Whole Foods markets. But I'll let you know once I visit Mobile, AL in January. But again, this is just one of my theories. Very similar to my theory that every dog I encounter loves me.
We picked up some groceries for a pasta dinner and headed back to Carrie's parents' house for the evening. Pre-cooking, we continued our lazy Saturday with watching Blue Valentine (starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling) on onDemand. We were intrigued to watch this rather depressing film hoping Ryan G would play his normal sweet heartthrob role. Instead, he rocked a cig half out of his white trash mouth the entire movie. Along his side, Michelle Williams played her normal depressing, dirty-haired Dawson's Creek role. I mean, if I had a smokin' hot hubby like Heath Ledger that starred in one of the greatest movies to date (10 Things I Hate About You. Stop judging me, it's hilarious), and he died, I'd be emo 24/7 too. Needless to say, the movie ended leaving us in question about whether we actually enjoyed it or not. Carrie played Chef Boyardee as I de-tailed the shrimp. We wined and dined (well, I drank water) and I went to bed a happy carbo-filled camper.
Do I even need to say that my alarm went off dark and early on Sunday morning at this point? Well, I think I just did. It was a chilly 42 degrees so I battled with running in my normal spandex shorts or my capri tights. I'm not a big person for change and racing in capris is untested, dangerous waters so I went with my shawrts. (I felt like J Kwon there for a second, sorry). Carrie dropped me off; I hit up my porta-potties, dropped off my race bag and wiggled into the start line crowed. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle yeahhhh. With a gun shot, I was gone. I took this race out slower, more strategically, nervous that I'd be choked by the hands of the mile high man. We ran past the stadium which was when I realized that right ahead of me ran a woman in a Abercrombie & Fitch winter coat that the cool kids in middle school sported. (That did not include me, as for a good chunk of junior high I had 3 rows of teeth (yes, 3 rows), glasses and permed hair that I didn't know how to style with gel). The coat was unzipped and the woman ran with her hands in the pockets, as if the puffy burgundy winter wear almost served as wings. It looked terribly uncomfortable and awkward to say the least. Mile 4 had a single hill that posed as the only fairly challenging section of the course. I was happy to see that, unlike the Chicago half marathon, Denver's was planned so runners could actually breath in the city as they ran. Nearing the final 4 miles or so, the course winded through a park and neighborhood area. I ran under a wide-legged Brooks inflatable rock star right before mile 10--when the altitude suffocated me. I became headachy and light-headed but trudged on. At this point, Rhianna was shouting about how she found love in a hopeless place for the 38th time in the matter of 3 minutes; at this point I let the fight in me take over. I looked at my watch, noticed I was running my recent average pace and found the finish line 1:43:27 later. My second fastest time...by 6 seconds. hah- HEY, it still counts. And then of course, I left my mark on Denver by throwing up repeatedly all over the street. Apparently this is routine for me now. I made my way to find Carrie and was handed the normal free food and the notso normal free food: a hot breakfast burrito. I really didn't want it, but how could you pass up a hot sausage wrapped in flour?! I gave it to Carrie when I found her and she was beaming. She was seriously such a trooper; not only was she so happy for me, but she also just loved taking in the entire atmosphere of the race. Her excitement as they announced the first marathoner coming in at an ungodly fast time would have made you think she was a dedicated runner that lived for this kind of stuff like me. It made my experience and post-race celebration that much more exciting!
We got my race bag full of warm clothes and I called my parents to let them know I finished and was alive. The great thing about races with "text tracking" is that when it works, people from afar can know how you're doing. But the thing is, it never works; and thus, when my parents don't get updates after I start, they immediately think I'm dying in a hospital somewhere. When I called my mom, she started to cry; she had been so concerned about how I'd do with the altitude and to hear I had my second fastest time brought out the happiest tears of a proud momma bear. Even half way across the country, my parents have a way of being the most supportive and amazing people for every single one of my races. When I was done getting all Hallmarky with my mom & dad, we headed back to Carrie's car to take advantage of the remainder of the beautiful Denver day.
Carrie continued to play tour guide and drove me to see the Red Rocks ampitheater. Only one of the most picturesque places I have ever seen in my entire life. It looks as if someone dipped their large Crayola paintbrush in the top of a dusty, red volcano and painted Pride Rock from The Lion King. The only thing missing was Simba with that gooey shit on his forehead. But seriously, the Red Rocks were amazing. And someone obviously let the insane asylum near Denver loose because there were people RUNNING and biking up these things. I'm not a physics whiz, but I really don't think gravity is supposed to work like that; I'm still dumbfounded by how they didn't just roll backwards down the steep slopes. Of course Carrie reminded me that if I were to ever move there, I'd be one of those people. And she's probably right. The ampitheater looks like such a legit place to see a concert. And in the visitor's center there, it listed every artist and band that's ever performed there and on what date they performed. Talk about some serious documentation.
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After Red Rocks, we enjoyed some Mexican food at the foot of the landmark. Carrie mentioned that this was a very frequented restaurant by Red Rock visitors. It doesn't surprise me because the fish tacos were the tits; and the decor of the restaurant included pictures of their 1994 Mardi Gras party that could've been mistaken for a Brandy Bunch pool party at the YMCA. After lunch, it was time for me to say my goodbyes to Carrie and Denver. Neither were very difficult because I was going to see Carrie just a week later at Mizzou's 100th Homecoming and I KNOW I'll be back to Denver. I've said time and again that I'd move to San Diego in a heartbeat. Well, while San Diego has beaches of beauty, it also has more fake boobs than the Mattel Barbie factory. So from a strictly city love affair and realistic place of where I could actually picture myself living and fitting in: Denver has my heart.
What I've loved so much about this journey is that I've gotten to visit some of my favorite places, places home to some of my favorite people and places that I've never been. Denver was the latter, but has become a favorite place and a place I someday hope can be home with some of my favorite people.
But for this weekend, Indy's on my mind for race #10. It's my first SATURDAY race which means I'll be racing double digits Saturday morning and double fisting by Saturday night. I'm roadtripping with my main girl Kirstin tomorrow after a half day of work. We'll be sure to thoroughly document the weekend since this will be quality material for when we become famous from our reality tv sitcom that's in the works. I'll try to blog when I get home Sunday. But you know I'm not very good about the whole timeliness shit. And I'm not sure what time we'll be home...mainly because the Indy time zones and the fall back time change confuses the crap outta me. So until some unknown time, bye bye!
