LA Day 1 & The LA Marathon Nutri Bullet Health and Fitness Expo

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We left late on Thursday night for Seattle, slept for a whopping 2.5 hours in a hotel room at a pretty horrible Best Western before heading to the airport to get on a plane to LA. I think our excitement is what kept us awake but it's hard to say, caffeine might have also been a factor...

I was still thinking about what was going on with my foot but still pretty excited to be headed off on a great trip with my sister. Our flight was relatively painless, we picked up our rental car and headed to our hotel for a quick change of clothes and then headed off to the Santa Monica Pier!

The weather was perfect, it was warm, not too hot, and lightly cloudy. All of which sounded just right for race day.

Special thanks to my sister and her awesome phone for all of these photos!

We also walked over to REI just off third street promenade so I could pick up my Skratch hydration for the race. I'd never explored Santa Monica before and was pleasantly surprised by all there was to do.

We walked around a bit, took in the sights, grabbed a bite to eat and then headed back to our hotel to rest for a couple of hours before heading to the expo to meet the girls! I was pretty in love with our awesome hotel room at one of the Santa Monica host hotels: The Shore Hotel.

 

The hotel was literally right across the street from the beach, so convenient!

Here I am at the entrance to the Nutribullet Health and Fitness Expo at the LA Convention Center:

I was super excited to see what the expo had in store. I've been to some big race expos over the last year so I think my expectations might have been a tad high... It was OKAY. Everything went very smoothly with bib pickup etc. The race merchandise was nice but I knew going in that I was only going to buy a hat. I was nervous about the possibility of not finishing the race and just in case that were to happen, I didn't want to buy another reminder... Also, I should have tried on the hat before buying it, more on that in my race review...

There were a few exhibitors but nothing really all that exciting. MarathonFoto was there offering a discount if you purchase your photos in advance ($65 for $100 gift certificate as opposed to $79 for the full digital pack after the race). I was thinking about it, but it turns out there was an issue with some Canadians and their postal codes, so that didn't work out for me. They gave me a phone number to call the next day but the inconvenience totally turned me off especially with the expensive price.

Among other things, I was pretty nervous about the time change on Saturday night!

They also had a wall similar to the one at Nike Town during the Nike Women's Marathon. Unfortunately, since I signed up only a few weeks before the race my name wasn't on it.

We had intended to meet Nikki & Jacki at the expo, but there was some miscommunication and issues using our phones so it didn't happen. Thankfully, we had dinner plans at Border Grill arranged in advance so we met there and had a delicious dinner! We were so tired after being up for practically 48 hours that we headed back to the hotel right after dinner and went to sleep.

Stay tuned for our 2nd day in LA and then for my full LA Marathon race review!