Night before Green Bay
All right. We've got the team assembled and Julie is all tucked in for a big night's sleep. Hopefully everybody will have a wonderful time tomorrow and all the wine and cheese we bought will be put to good use.
We did indeed find cheese and wine. If you go to a normal grocery store here, they do have the local cheddar. Normally, when you buy cheddar, you decide how sharp you want to go (e.g. mild, sharp, extra sharp). Cheese shoppers here are clearly a bit more sophisticated. The $5/lb cheese in the refrigerated section of the store lists the age, rather than the sharpness. It's more like 18 month, 3 year, etc. However, we did not buy cheese in a grocery store. We went shopping at Nala's Fromagerie!
The cheese place was great and their cheese smiths were very good at dealing with tourists...
shopkeeper: What kind of cheese do you like?
us: Fetch me your finest Wisconsin cheddar!
shopkeeper: No problem, try this!
us: *eating cheese*
shopkeeper: Now, if you like this I have to insist you try this English cheddar.
us: mroumph
shopkeeper: You know what you really might like? You need to try this caramelized onion cheese...
us: mrerrmph?
shopkeeper: Oh, I know, but they eat it with pickles.
us: aumphmrrm
It went on like that for a while. There were also some people out front giving out samples of some Spanish cheeses. We were the only ones there, but I imagine we were just off peak hours or something. It was pretty cool. Across the group, we left with a pound of cheese and a bunch of bread.
After the cheese, we went next door to the wine shop. The we did a spot of tasting and everybody bought wine. All this has to be consumed Sunday post-race.
Around the cheese and wine, we also drove the course. I was a little bummed. All the super pretty stuff is across the river where the real marathoners run. I'll just be meandering though residential areas -- which is a little disorienting and the sense of progress reminds me of canoeing in the middle of a big lake. My complaints have been met with limited sympathy by the people that have to run twice as far... But their side of the river is so much prettier!
After the drive-about and lunch (where our team was completed by the addition of The Physician), Julie needed to make ready her elite refreshments and head over to the elite runner pre-race meeting.
(Julie fills her extra special, super-secret elite bottles with: hotel bathroom tap water.)
(This is what an expo looks like from above.)
(And here it is. Everyone's big moment. We all looked on proudly as Julie put her bottles in the elite bottle bins and meandered into the "fast people only" meeting.)
I'm planning to do chia seeds and bring a single gel along tomorrow morning, just in case. I'm even putting together a video series showing the seed preparation. I may even have a sequence involving my collapse in puddle of my- Let's just say, there may be more videos if I get some help from our team observers.
Bed time. Yay, go awesome fastness!
We did indeed find cheese and wine. If you go to a normal grocery store here, they do have the local cheddar. Normally, when you buy cheddar, you decide how sharp you want to go (e.g. mild, sharp, extra sharp). Cheese shoppers here are clearly a bit more sophisticated. The $5/lb cheese in the refrigerated section of the store lists the age, rather than the sharpness. It's more like 18 month, 3 year, etc. However, we did not buy cheese in a grocery store. We went shopping at Nala's Fromagerie!
The cheese place was great and their cheese smiths were very good at dealing with tourists...
shopkeeper: What kind of cheese do you like?
us: Fetch me your finest Wisconsin cheddar!
shopkeeper: No problem, try this!
us: *eating cheese*
shopkeeper: Now, if you like this I have to insist you try this English cheddar.
us: mroumph
shopkeeper: You know what you really might like? You need to try this caramelized onion cheese...
us: mrerrmph?
shopkeeper: Oh, I know, but they eat it with pickles.
us: aumphmrrm
It went on like that for a while. There were also some people out front giving out samples of some Spanish cheeses. We were the only ones there, but I imagine we were just off peak hours or something. It was pretty cool. Across the group, we left with a pound of cheese and a bunch of bread.
After the cheese, we went next door to the wine shop. The we did a spot of tasting and everybody bought wine. All this has to be consumed Sunday post-race.
Around the cheese and wine, we also drove the course. I was a little bummed. All the super pretty stuff is across the river where the real marathoners run. I'll just be meandering though residential areas -- which is a little disorienting and the sense of progress reminds me of canoeing in the middle of a big lake. My complaints have been met with limited sympathy by the people that have to run twice as far... But their side of the river is so much prettier!
After the drive-about and lunch (where our team was completed by the addition of The Physician), Julie needed to make ready her elite refreshments and head over to the elite runner pre-race meeting.
I'm planning to do chia seeds and bring a single gel along tomorrow morning, just in case. I'm even putting together a video series showing the seed preparation. I may even have a sequence involving my collapse in puddle of my- Let's just say, there may be more videos if I get some help from our team observers.
Bed time. Yay, go awesome fastness!
Comments