Spectating At The National Marathon

So this worked out good.  Day 16 of the 30 Day Challenge is - A picture of someone who inspires you.

Guess who inspires me?  Runners and bloggers!  Who did I see yesterday?  Runners and bloggers!

My day started at the early hour of around 5am.  I was up and bundling up in warmish clothing to go stand outside in the cold and be a spectator (for the first time ever!) at the National Marathon!

One trip to Starbucks (I had my usual Skinny Vanilla Latte, and a raspberry scone), and we were on our way to downtown DC.  The plan was to meet Caitlin and Emily around mile 3.  We quickly found the approximate location and soon after, the elite runners came barreling through!

En fuego!!

Soon we found Emily and Caitlin who were hard to miss with their enthusiasm brimming over.

It's fun spectating with blogger celebrities, people were constantly yelling to them that they read their blogs and one lady even stopped and came over to hug Caitlin!

We hung out at mile 3 til we saw a lot of our blogger friends and Casey (Emily's husband) run by, then headed to mile 10 for our next glimpse.  En route, Alison remembered she had a huge bag of Swedish Fish in the car and also a box of tissues.  We bee-lined to her car to get those for mile 10.

The Swedish Fish were a pretty big hit and so were the tissues!  We kept screaming, "Swedish Fish!  Tissues!" at everyone running by.  People were either oblivious/not interested, or mowed down people to get to us and grab a tissue or some fish.

We saw more of our friends run by and Nicole stopped to talk to us for a second.

Eventually we packed up and headed to the finish line at RFK, which required a cab and metro ride.

We found some of the finishers.

Everyone liked the course and said it was a fun race.  I might have to do this one myself someday!  The whole time I lived in DC I never did any races!

Post race, Alison and I headed back into the heart of DC to retrieve our car.  We ended up walking through the city for a bit and I got some pictures of the scenery.

Also, the cherry blossoms and flowers are out in DC! 

I have seen the cherry blossoms quite a few times and actually have an entire folder of pictures of them on my hard drive, but it really never gets old, they are gorgeous :)

At this point it was pushing 11am and we were pretty famished.  We went to La Madeleine for brunch, which is a french bakery/restaurant with multiple locations around DC.  Fun fact- I went on my second date with my husband at a La Madeleine!

I had an omelet with spinach, chedder, and mushrooms, which came with a crossaint.

It hit the spot after all that walking and cheering!

I had a great time watching all the runners and seeing so many bloggers that I know in real life and from the web.  It was definitely inspiring.  I think we bloggers inspire each other, which is awesome!