All our hard work and determination was finally put to the test, Shersti, Rachel, Holly and myself headed down to Nashville for the Country Music Marathon & Half Marathon. Holly come down on Friday and spent the weekend with some family in the area while the rest of us made a nice girls weekend out of it! We hit the road on Thursday evening after John and Matt were home from work. Matt was a saint and watched Zachary all weekend since Josh is out of town!
Friday morning we headed downtown to the Expo to pick up our race packets and to check out some local sights! We had lunch at the Wild Horse Saloon (personally my favorite meal of the trip). It was food with some nice entertainment (even in the middle of the day).
Next we headed down the street to check out the Hard Rock
Then it was time to check out the Country Music Hall of Fame. Its one of the top site to see in Nashville.
(Carrie Underwood's dress)
On our walk back to the car we took a quick picture at Ryman Auditorium
That night we knew we wanted to head to bed early but first we needed to have really good meal. One of Rachel's favorite restaurants happened to be just a few minutes from our hotel so we headed to the Macaroni Grill for dinner. After that we headed to our home away from home to get all our gear ready for our 4am alarm clock. Knowing that there were 30,000 plus runners we decided to take a shuttle to the start line. When we arrived it was still dark! But we got to enjoy a beautiful sunrise at the Parthenon in Centennial Park, just blocks away from the Vanderbilt football stadium. It ended up being a beautiful morning! We knew the bad weather was coming and were hoping that it would hold off until the end. Luckily for us it did! Unfortunately not all the runners were so lucky. Due to the severe storm (T-storm & tornado warnings) they cut the full marathon runners short at the half to make sure they were safely off the course before the storm hit.
This went on for miles and miles and miles.....
Several people along the route had signs like this one, you couldn't help but smile and pick up the pace for a few steps
As soon as we crossed the finish line it started pouring! As we were winding our way through all the food booths to the shuttle lines the announcer came on with a warning to all the runners not to keep our medals too close to our bodies because the thunder storm was right over the area.
After heading back to the hotel we showered, headed out for some lunch then took in a nice chick flick! After that we grabbed some ice cream and headed back to the hotel for the night.
Home sweet home with my little guy!
A little side note.....the weekend after the marathon Nashville was hit with the worst storm the area has ever seen. The Nashville flood of 2010 hit all of downtown and the surrounding areas. All the places we visited were damaged in the flood (even the movie theater was underwater that was 13 miles away from downtown)!
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