Too much of a good thing

Meet Heidi. Heidi works for another marketing agency representing Snickers Marathon Bars. We see her at many events, and she's been friends with Stephen for a while. I ended up running an errand with her to go pick up a package, and when she found out that the package had not arrived, I saw first-hand that she is someone who will get what she wants regardless. Here she is on the phone(s) with FedEx discussing said missing package.



Anyway, jump a few hours forward in the expo. We needed to get into our storage to get more shoes and bags, and I went to the union services desk and talked to two different people, both of whom gave me the run-around and made countless excuses for why we couldn't get into our storage. Stephen asked Heidi to get us into our storage. I had my doubts, but she threw on a Crocs shirt and two minutes later we were in a freight elevator headed towards our storage.

I was impressed. Then again, guys are at a natural disadvantage (or girls are at a natural advantage) when it comes to dealing with union workers.

Much of our time at the expo was also spent writing directions on raffle tickets. Next time we'll think ahead and get tickets pre-printed. My hand didn't last long in this age of computer-written everything.



And here's a shot to give some perspective on just how huge the expo was. This is maybe half of it. Note how huge Nike's presence was (the big white hanging sign area). Our booth is right above the black REI tent in the foreground.



There's always something interesting going on at the expo.



And compare these shots to the last post. Much like the amazing transformation from load-in to expo-ready, breaking down happens amazingly quickly. This is about an hour after the expo closed.





After a really lousy cab ride punctuated by slamming into the side of a curb, we went to bed early since we had a 4:00AM wake-up this morning.

We got to the Crocs store on the race course at about 5AM and immediately began transforming the area into our "Crocs Block" theme. The stencil and spray chalk worked amazingly well.



People made cheer signs until they were gone, and then we gave out probably a thousand or more pieces of swag (keychains, iPod armbands, etc.) in about 15 minutes. This job is definitely a great way to learn about the psychological impacts of mob mentality. That and people just want free stuff.



Since we were at mile 2 on the course, 45,000 runners came and went fairly quickly.



The chalk on the roads actually held up to all the runners amazingly well.



After the crowd died down in front of the store, we moved to the finish line area to give away our remaining gear. This is where all of us pretty much simultaneously hit a wall and were ready to be done with a very long weekend. I definitely think Crocs are comfortable, but like any good thing, too much can ruin the experience. I needed to get out of Crocs for a while. My feet are in rough shape.

After finishing up and getting back to the hotel, Nate and I intermittently napped and watched football all afternoon. At 6PM, we headed out for a nine mile run (this was planned ahead of time - we didn't just decide running a bunch while already worn out sounded like a good idea). Regardless, it felt really good to get out and exercise, and helped wake us up at least temporarily. Now that I'm halfway training to be doing distance running, I'm hoping to be able to get in at least one more half marathon before the tour is over.

And even though it took three days in Chicago, we treated ourselves to pizza at Lou Malnati's tonight. The pizza arrived and Nate, Molly and I all simultaneously whipped out cameras to take pictures. We're blog nerds I suppose.