Space Coast Marathon Fau-Xpo Pickup

Years ago there was a snafu at the Space Coast Marathon and I wasn’t allowed to run because they claimed I hadn’t registered. I drove him in a Groundhog Day angry, foul mood and pulled up an image of the cashed check that showed I had paid 10 months before the event and they hadn’t bothered to list me in the system. The race director was very apologetic and bent over backwards to make things right.

Since then, I’ve tried to be supportive of their annual event down near Kennedy Space Center, held on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It’s somewhat of a local race for me when I’m here, requiring a little over an hour or so to drive out. They’ve since rescinded the day of packet pickup option, partly I suspect due to issues with my turning up on the day years ago and the refusal to let me run. I’ve noticed however that every year I go out early to pickup my packet that invariably on the day there is still a race-day packet pickup being offered. And every year I vow not to make the double dip trip out to the Coast to do the packet pickup and then the race a few days later. But every year I try to save up my karma for when I really, really need a race day pickup and try not to abuse the system.

Still, I suspect I’ll be fuming on Sunday when there’s a race day pickup option.

Especially given this week’s only just begun Lemony Snicket styled series of unfortunate events. Yesterday my car wouldn’t start without pummeling me with warning lights so I abandoned that plan. Today, I couldn’t even get my remote keys to unlock the car to get my phone charger. My mom graciously offered to drive me and thankfully she did; she had to channel her own inner Mel Gibson Road Warrior. She drove safely and smartly but good god the oblivious Thanksgiving tourists and local car crazies were in full, terrible form today. A lot of near misses and close calls, none of which would have been Mom’s fault but would have seriously ruined the day.

As it stands, I’m still in a foul mood, the bathroom scale and I still seemingly on different definitions of gravity and thus arguing incessantly about how much I should be weighing. Despite best efforts, and admittedly some poor food choices these past two days, the numbers keep creeping up, up, up. And my spirits keep tumbling down, down, down.

So it was that as I entered the Running Zone store to pickup my packet I was in a frazzled, fragile state.

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The actual expo isn’t until Saturday but I kinda didn’t want to have two consecutive days of travel back and forth to the coast… especially since I may still be car-less if I can’t get this infernal dashboard warning light resolved. It was something of a fau-xpo, with Space Coast Marathon swag on sale and a bib pickup line. The swag was nice enough but oddly overpriced — I just couldn’t see spending $17.95 for a plastic tumbler emblazoned with the shuttle logo of the event. But maybe that’s what things cost.

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I snapped a photo with the 3-D astronaut standee that always hangs out at these events and Mom framed me before the shuttle launch backdrop. She jokingly said she was trying to frame out the edges because she really wanted it to seem like I was right there at a shuttle launch, ‘cuz, ya know, it’s not like I’d burn my face off or anything standing where I was standing if it were real. She was trying to cheer me out of my funk; she’s good like that.

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So I’m bib’ed and primed and ready to launch on Sunday. But I couldn’t face the detour out to downtown city beautiful to pick up my Turkey Trot bib. They offer a race-day pickup an hour before the race that I figure I’ll avail myself off. Nothing like walking up in a giant cooked turkey suit to get a number — maybe there’ll be some good photos from that.

Thanks, Mom, for chauffeuring me ’round and helping me reset for this week’s running. I’m not exactly a barrel of monkeys at the moment… but on Thursday I’ll be one cooked turkey (consider that a teaser, folks!).