Nike Women's Half DC Weekend - Leading Up to the Race

So, a week and a half later, I'm finally posting about Nike Women's Half!  I won't go too much into detail, since each mile by mile is getting kind of fuzzy, and many others have done extremely in depth recaps that sum everything up much better than I could!  This is going to be slightly long because even though I'm not going in depth, I'm just taking out most of the weekend in one post, so bear with me!

We drove up to DC on Friday.  We hit about an hour outside of DC just before five o'clock.  At one point we literally moved two miles in an hour.  It was absolutely horrible and took us just over twelve hours.  For comparison, we barely hit traffic on the way home and it took just under ten hours.  We found this amazing place called Ray's to the Third so of course we had to stop there!  Amazing burgers and delicious shakes!  It was a perfect choice.

Saturday morning, we got to the expo just as it opened to avoid the lines I'd read horror stories about from last year.  We had absolutely no wait to pick up my packet or my t-shirt!  It was a much longer walk from the metro stop than we thought, but luckily it was gorgeous out.  The expo was interesting.  It was kind of nice to not have people trying to sell you things or sign up for races, but there also wasn't much to do.  We did see Meg and Kristy at the expo, so that was super exciting!  I did get my hair braided at the Paul Mitchell station and it stayed up beautifully, so that was a major plus!  After that, we went up to Nike Georgetown.  I got a couple of shirts, and they're so soft and comfy!

We had some time to kill before the #runnerslove meet-up, so we went down to the bank for Ray, then up to the LUSH Cosmetics store.  I was so happy we found one and didn't even have to go out of the way to get there!  I love my LUSH, but sadly we don't have one anywhere near here.  I found it interesting that hardly anything in Georgetown opened until 10 or 11.  Finally it was time for #runnerslove at Sprinkles Cupcakes.  Oh my goodness!  The cupcakes were to die for and the company was even better!  It was so nice to finally get to meet a few of the people I'd been waiting for, and to see some familiar faces!  After Sprinkles we went up to this little park and sat and talked for a while.  It was so gorgeous and perfect out!  Then Kristy, Meg, one other blogger whose name I horrible don't remember, and Ray and I went up to Alex and Ani.  My sister is a huge fan of them, and I finally got my first bracelet with an anchor charm!  

Ray and I headed back to the hotel to drop of all of our goodies, and then headed into the "real" DC to do some sight seeing.  First we saw the Capitol and a few other important buildings (I'm a horrible sight seer, really), and then stopped in this little cafe to get a sandwich for lunch.  We then headed to the White House, then the other end of the Mall to see the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, etc.  It was a very touristy day, and was a lot more walking at about 10 miles than I meant to do.   Oops!

We finally got back to the hotel, and then went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner.  Oh. My. Goodness. It was delicious!  I wish we had one here.  We tried to get to bed early and succeeded partially.

I've included just a few of our way too many pictures below!