Tap N' Run - Nashville

On the home stretch of our four races in four weeks for April!  We ran the Tap N' Run last Saturday.  It was nice to not be going out of town for the weekend!  We were able to hang around the house, work on projects and then head up to Nashville to run that afternoon.

 Obviously this race is in the afternoon.  Who wants to wake up to run and drink beer in the morning (other than my younger more "youthful exuberant" self as the academic probation adviser once called me in college).  The race was at 5:00, so we headed downtown around 3:00 to go to packet pickup at BB Kings.  We of course took the Jeep as it was a BEAUTIFUL day, but that also meant we forgot Ben's parking pass for his lot downtown.
No problem, I have this all figured out.  He can drop me off at BB Kings, I'll get the packets and he can go to the parking lot by Hooters and we'll meet there.  He drops me off, I go in get the packets, and head back out and realize due to the traffic he's not even a block from where he dropped me off.

I sprint...full speed to catch him before he turned on 3rd where I knew there wouldn't be any cars.  I was probably 5 feet from him, reaching for the door knob, out of breath so I couldn't holler, and he makes the turn and leaves me in the dust.....of course he got a huge kick of of this as I walked slowly to the car so we could grab lunch at SATCO. (yum!)

After we scarfed some tacos and cheese dip we headed back downtown to run.  The costumes.  Oh man everyone was in costume.  I wore a tie-dye shirt and a beer mug hat leftover from St. Patrick's day and I was under-dressed.  There was a man dressed as a baby, ninja turtles, Mario Kart, a couple of guys barefooted since they were hanging out in a bar downtown, heard about the race, signed up and ran it barefooted.

the starting corral

They were having issues with the sound, when I say issues, I mean ear-piercing feedback.  You'd think in Music City someone would be able to work a PA.

Starting Line Beer!

We got in the starting corral and were handed a beer - not a full beer, I think it's around 5 ounces.  They count us down and we chug and run, we ran down 2nd, up Broadway, turned on 3rd then headed towards the dreaded Pedestrian Bridge.  The degree of the arch of this bridge is insane, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to run it.  This is by no means a fast race, almost everyone jogs or walks it, roughly 99% of the people walk the bridge.  We got to the top of it, a Saturday evening in April means one thing to all high schoolers, Prom.  There was a group of people who obviously didn't check to see what was going on downtown as they headed to the bridge to take prom pictures.  A group of maybe 16 kids on one side of the bridge and their parents on the other side...and hundreds of runners between.  They tried to take advantage of a break in the runners for the obligatory "jumping picture" but they didn't account for Ben's ridiculous speed, as he ran, and jumped at the exact moment they did.  I'd love to see a copy of that picture.

Just a couple of Hulks

This Hulk knew the JT dance that was playing over the speaker so obviously she had to complete it.

Then at the bottom, another chug station.  We go around the stadium, back across the other bridge to Printer's Alley to another chug station, then back around to 2nd and are done.  It's only a 4K so it's certainly not that difficult.

Printer's Alley

This is the 2nd time we ran this.  We also did it in 2012.  Would we do it again?  Probably not.  Would we recommend it to people? Absolutely.

It's a great race, pretty well organized.  I wish they had more entertainment throughout the course, even if it's just speakers blasting music.  It was completely dead on the other side of the river so anything would have been nice.

We scooped up our awesome medals and headed to Bro's for ENTIRELY too much crawfish with the family.

Finish Line Medals and Beers!

Warrior Dash - Georiga - 2014

Finally Finally FINALLY, my favorite race and race weekend of the year.  Warrior Dash.  This is the 3rd year we've run as a group (hubs and John went in  2011).  You can read about last year's here!  If you are looking into running an obstacle race or mud run, hands down this is the one to do.  They are by far the most organized race we've done.  (I'm not including Spartan in this since our experience with that race was less than the "norm" as far as races go.  Read about it here)  Last year they had some...snafus to be nice.  Parking was a nightmare, buses to get to parking was a nightmare.  They owned up to it in a big way.  They apologized and offered all runners from that race I think at least a 50% off discount for this years race if not more.  And this race was DEFINITELY above par.  Minus a back-up at Goliath (their big and new obstacle this year) there we had zero issues.

2014 Warrior Dash - Mountain City, GA

We've had everything planned out for AT LEAST a month, probably 2 months.  Of course, the curse of the new runner hits.  I've probably talked about this before, we have a theory that if someone comes and runs with us who has never run with us before, something bad happens.  See my post on the Spartan Race where we had several new people running with us and it almost killed us!  The Tuesday before the race, so 3 days before we were heading to Mountain City, GA our cabin rental place called Ben.  They had a pipe burst 2 weeks before and "thought it would be fixed by now" so we had to cancel our reservations there and find somewhere new.  Back to the Murder Cabin!  We stayed here in 2012, it is seriously a set of a scary movie.  You know how I know it's the set of a scary movie?  It has a book case...no real hotels have book cases, if you still question it, the copy of Deliverance that we left in 2012 was still on the bookcase.

We arrived Friday evening and proceeded to get ready to properly fuel our bodies for a race, with a shrimp boil and beer. It was delicious.  After we devoured it, we chilled for a little while and went to bed.

Pre Race Crew

The next morning we got up early and headed to the race site.  It was awesome.  Completely different than the previous year as the course was basically completely reversed.  It was uphill both ways, seriously you began and ended the race going uphill.  Jerks. We had to swim through a lake that was absolutely freezing, climb over cars, jump fire, (successfully) traverse A frame walls.  It was a great race.

Warrior Roast

Goliath

Goliath

After Ben almost killed a photographer on Goliath we headed to the post race party.  Beer and Turkey Legs.  You really can't ask for a better combination.  We hung out there then decided to head back to the cabin and drink the beer we had already purchased.  Apparently we thought we were in college still because 5 of us drank nearly 40 beers...excluding the ones we threw like grenades when someone didn't describe something well enough during our game of Charades (phone app....where you put the phone to your head and you have to guess what the word is based on the other person's description).  We grilled out entirely too much steak, then of course at it all, complete with baked potatoes, watched Boondock Saints at senior citizen audio level and crashed.

Post Race!

Turkey Legs!

Post-Race Party!

2 years ago we followed up Warrior Dash with white water rafting on the Ocoee.  Why not do it again this year?  It was awesome last time.  What we didn't realize was that Warrior Dash was a month earlier this year as compared to 2012.  When I say the water was cold, that's a severe understatement, if I were to say it was freezing, also a severe understatement.  Was it awesome?  Of course.  There were only 2 boats of people, then they had about 4 or 5 boats of trainees.  It was crazy to see them in their training.  That's a tough job.  Hats off to anyone who does it.

It was an awesome weekend with amazing friends.  I get to run another Warrior Dash in Ohio this year, it's going to have some GIANT shoes to fill if it's even going to come close to the race weekend we just had.

Glow Run - Chattanooga, TN - 2014

I cannot believe we were in April before we did our first race this year.  Last year by this time we had already completed 5 races!

There are some races that I learn about on my various webpages that I simply MUST do.  Glow Run was one of them.  To my knowledge, they are the only glow run with medals, yes I'm a medal whore, and they are GIANT AND Glow in the Dark!

So I proceeded to start my campaign, emailing them multiple times to come to Nashville, citing that other races have multiple races in Nashville with a huge turnout.  Sadly, they didn't come to Nashville.  BUT they were 180 miles away in Chattanooga.  This had to happen.  Then I had to start my next campaign.  Convincing the hubs to let us drive to Chatt for a race.  We decided to drive down but only for the race.

The race started at 8:30, so we left Nashville at 3:30, met some friends for supper (word to the wise: running with a belly full of pimento cheese WILL come back to haunt you), and headed to the race.

It was awesome.  Very small.  Only 2000 runner/walkers.  They had pre-race zumba, free glow in the dark face painting, glow merch, and the brightest race shirts known to mankind.

The race was great, very well organized.  I HIGHLY recommend this race.  I'm glad too because I had been excited about it for quite a while!

Wine and Dine Half Marathon - First Obstacle Completed

Shoot runDisney races are so stressful just to register. They keep getting more and more expensive, and more and more popular.  I don't get it.

In the summer of 2012, I registered for the 2013 Princess Half Marathon. I registered for it early, but I don't remember doing it as soon as registration opened.  I do remember that it was after that that we learned about the Coast to Coast Challenge after that and many months later Ben registered.  I want to say that was around October but I'm not sure.

Our first runDisney and half marathon medal - Princess Half Marathon

We realized that if we were going to run one half marathon, we might as well go for our Coast to Coast.  We've never been to Disneyland so we figured now is a good time as any.

Disneyland Half Marathon Medal

Fast forward to January of 2013, Disneyland Half Marathon goes on sale.  runDisney had added 2 new events, the 10K and the Dumbo Dare Challenge.  Apparently these types of challenges make the races difficult to pass up.  The race sold out in 26 hours.  I remember fortunately being off that day from work, and calling Ben in a panic because we needed to register IMMEDIATELY!  We were calling our friends who we had planned on running with making sure they had registered.  Very stressful.

But nevertheless, we were able to get that coveted Coast to Coast Medal!

As it is with most people, as soon as you finish a race, you immediately start planning the next one.  Well the same things happens with me, for both running, and Disney trips. I immediately had my eye on the Wine and Dine Half Marathon.  Honestly, how could you pass up a party in the World Showcase until 4 in the morning for only the runners and their families?

I then started recruiting to get people to come with us.  We have a group of runners from college that I worked on selling it to, I tried to sell it to some friends who love Disney as much as we do.  We came up with 6 of us.  Should be an awesome time!

So I started doing my research, stalking blogs, and all that to find out exactly when the race would go on sale. I found out it was sometime in March, then sometime in early March, then March 4th.  Should be easy to remember, it was noon eastern time on Mardi Gras.  So 11:00 here in Nashville. I was working (dangit) So I told my boss that I would be out of commission at about 10:50 until...well until I got registered.  My husband called, we had a plan, both register for ourselves.  That way one of us isn't trying to register for the other. I stared at the clock for about 10 minutes, which takes FOREVER.  Like trying to watch a pot boil.

tick tick...tock tock...tick tock...go clock go!

I had roughly 10 tabs open in my Chrome. Facebook running groups, runDisney pages, active.com.  11:05...still nothing.  Then the facebook groups started blowing up "IT'S LIVE!".  HOLY CRAP I COULDN'T FIND THE LINK.  I am panicking.  I could feel my heartbeat in my throat as I think, am I seriously going to throw up because of registering for a runDisney race?

Finally, after some freaked out phone calls to the husband we found the link.  I got registered for the Wine and Dine Half Marathon and the Jingle Jungle 5K just as planned.  I call Ben back to make sure he had gotten registered.  He hadn't!  The page froze before he could get it submitted.  Cue another freak-out.  I take the reigns and get him registered.  WHEW!  We got in.  We check with our friends who are going with us.  Everyone got in!  HOORAY!

Now for the fun, and not so fun part.  The planning and waiting...oh and yes...the training.

So a heads up, if you are reading some of these posts and thinking, 'man runDisney sounds like ALOT of fun' you'd be right.  But do you research!  They are expensive!  They just announced a new Avengers Half Marathon in Disneyland where registration starts at $195!!!  Also know when it goes on sale.  Like your blood sugar check the runDisney website and check it often. They sell out fast, and seem to only be getting faster!

Weekend Getaway to the Big Easy

This is a post about the other half of our title...drinking.  There is almost zero running in it.

There are two places in this world that are no brainers when it comes to vacations for us.  New Orleans and Disney World.  Last week Ben realized he had Monday off so I worked it out in my schedule to take off Monday as well.

Ben's run on Sunday morning

That was the easy part.  Then we had to decide where to go.  Gatlinburg, Cincinnati / Perfect North, a couple other places and we finally decided on Atlanta.  I had nixed anywhere north due to the fact that I hate the cold and said we were going anywhere south.  Thanks to the Ikea there I was already shopping for what I was going to bring home.

Then Ben came home on Thursday and said he no longer wanted to go to Atlanta and he had booked us in the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans for the weekend. Awesome.  It's been almost 2 years since we've gone down there and we were LONG overdue.

Ben was not thrilled with the decor in the hotel

Friday after work we headed to Tuscaloosa.  Normally anyone with a degree from Tennessee would take as long of a bypass as necessary to avoid such a town, but since we lived there for 9 (long) months we wanted to go back and hit up our favorite spot.  Nick's Filet House - or known to locals as "Nicks in the Sticks".

 This place is in an old gas station, I think, and the sign out front blew away a long time ago and "we don't need to put up a new sign, there's a couple hour wait here every Friday night as it is".  Their signature drink?The Nicodemus.  It's hunch punch in a Styrofoam cup with a shot of 151 added and 2 straws.  Why are there two straws? "Because that's how it's always been served."

They don't even need to replace their sign, everyone who needs to know knows where it is

The drink of legends...and forgotten nights.

                                               
After drinking entirely too many Nicodemuses we headed back to the hotel, crashed and got up early to head down to New Orleans.

We arrived in New Orleans around noon and started our ritual.

Stop 1. Tropical Isle for a hand grenade.

Stop 2. Port of Call - must have hand grenade finished before going in

Stop 3. French Market

No buttons on the inside of the elevator!  Magic

We've always stayed in the quarter.  But this time, due to awesome free hotel points (double hooray for not having to pay for the hotel room!) we stayed right downtown, across the street from the Superdome.  We were 2 miles from Port of Call so we set our for our trek.  Luckily our first stop was en route to Port of Call.  We always stop at Tropical Isle.  You cannot go to New Orleans without getting a hand grenade.  So we picked ours up and due to the awesome open container law we continued on to Port of Call.

Stop #1 - Tropical Isle

Waiting for the table at Port of Call

We got to Port of Call and had an hour wait.  AN HOUR!  I cannot remember the last time I waited at all for a restaurant. So we sat on the curb, Ben sipped and I chugged my hand grenade and waited on a table.  We were finally sat and I went to the bathroom and came back and Ben had already ordered us 2 Neptune's Monsoons. I was first introduced to this drink after a friend suggested this place and said "1 of these drinks will put you on your ass".  Clearly he didn't know me because 1 of no drink will ever put me on my ass.  The first time we had this drink, we had to go to the hotel and take a nap.  The 2nd time we had this drink...we had to go to the hotel and take a nap.Finally after several attempts we can drink this without immediately passing out.

After eating the most glorious hamburger and baked potato, we took the rest of our drink (served in a 32 ounce cup) and headed to the French Market.  

FINALLY Sweet burgers and Neptune's Monsoons at Port of Call

The French Market is basically a New Orleans themed flea market.  You want something in the colors, purple, gold, green or with a fleur de lis or tiger striped...you go there. 

I go there for candles.  Specifically Carnival Candles.  They are awesome.  So awesome and I spent about $30 and got 7 tarts (those things that go in the warmers) and 1 jar candle. 

What is not awesome...dealing with the smell of 8 different scented candles for a weekend.  For some reason these mixed together and smelled like popcorn.  Everywhere we went we smelled popcorn...including the 10 hour drive back to Nashville.  Was it worth it though?  Come to my house to smell the amazing mango mandarin wafting through the air.

Pat O's fire and water fountain!

From there we headed to Jackson Square, meandered a bit looking at the art, then back to Bourbon and got a couple more hand grenades, went to Felix's for some oysters (First Supper) and got some hurricanes from Pat O's.  Ben found a brass band on the street that of course he had to sit in with for a little bit. I'm thankful for all the alcohol when he plays on random people's horns without bringing a mouthpiece. Gross!  Then headed to Coop's Place for second supper.  This is one of our favorite places to eat.  Unfortunately, it didn't hit the spot like it normally does.  Not to me.  It could be because I wasn't that hungry to begin with but I didn't feel the urge like I usually do to want to eat there again on that trip. 

Felix's Char-grilled Oysters

Coop's Place!

When you see it you'll..........

Highlight of his night.

Sunday morning Ben being way better than me got up to run.  He ran all through the Quarter which was nearly deserted at this hour which of course I instantly regretted not running so I could see it empty (aka stop to take pictures at Jackson Square). Then we headed out for one of my favorite restaurants in the whole wided world.  Mother's.  I promise, you will get nothing bad here.  My favorite, and what they're known for, is the Ferdi's Special. French bread, baked ham, roast beef, shredded cabbage, mayo, creole mustard, yellow mustard and the queen mother of all condiments "debris".  Debris is what falls off the roast beef when they are cooking it and they make a gravy out of it and top their sandwiches.  Mmmm cha!

Someone's feeding the kitties in Jackson Square!

We picked a BEAUTIFUL weekend to go down!  2 Weeks later a Polar Vortex hit and it snowed in Jackson Square!

Just hanging out with a Mardi Gras jester and getting restaurant suggestions

Then we headed back down to the French Market to look around again, back through Jackson Square since it was dark when we went on Saturday, ate a muffuletta at Central Grocery and some crawfish boudin and fried gator poboy and had some delicious drinks at the Organic Banana.  Yeah, I know...dirty hippy drinks.  We found my sister an awesome present and headed to the other end of the quarter to get a praline from the Southern Candy Company.  These people are so nice and recommended a place for us to go for supper.  We walked back down to Bourbon watched the end of the Broncos game at Tropical Isle while downing entirely too many hand grenades. We headed down the street to Spirits.  If you watch Bar Rescue you may have seen this bar.  It was something like Thirsty Turtle, a direct competitor of Tropical Isle.  Jon Taffer cleaned it up and gave them a signature drink, "The Resurrection"  To be in direct competition of something means you have a similar product and price...The hand grenade is $8 with a $7 refill, the Resurrection is $15 with a $9 refill!  Holy Mackerel!

We headed back to the hotel since it was getting way too cold to be in shorts and changed and had all the intentions in the world to head over to a brass band concert.  Ben hit a wall though, we headed out to the Palace Cafe, not far from our hotel, had a HUGE hunk of meat and some bananas fosters which were delicious.  Headed back to the hotel and crashed.  

The Dome was orange and white, clearly a sign of things to come.

Monday we got up, at at Mother's again where I, again, had the Ferdi Special and Ben had a delicious crawfish etouffee topped omelet and grits. We hurried back to the hotel to get out of dodge before the MLK day march went right by our hotel.  

Visiting my sisters in the Coven

One last stop before leaving, I wanted to stop by the house mansion where the filmed the exterior for American Horror Story: Coven.  We took a quick picture then headed to Hattiesburg to meet with an old friend for lunch.  

#Drewmors

After a bite to eat, we were on our way back to Tennessee where the temperature dropped about 30 degrees from the time we got in the car until we arrived at home.  Bummer.

Road Trippin

It was a wonderful weekend, especially being able to have the hotel paid for and planned 3 days before we left!  I guess I'll need to start burning all these candles so we can hurry up and head back!