St. Jude Half Marathon Expo

Friday, Friday, today is a Happy Day!

Sorry...yall know I love a Friday.

Thanks to d.a.r., Melissa, and Aishlea for your feedback on the Thrifty Christmas post! I will have to check out Ebates per their recommendations.

Yesterday morning I drove to downtown Memphis to pick up my race packet, and browse the Expo for the St. Jude Half Marathon that takes place *tomorrow* (she says, biting fingernails feverishly).

Sorry I forgot my camera at the actual expo, but I do have some pics of the loot I got while there.

The first 1,200 people in line got Nike Running hats! They retail for $20. I love it.
In our 'goody bags' were mostly pamphlets about other races, and a couple of coupons. Nothing too exciting except for this:

A $500 gift card for sunglasses? Have yall ever gotten one of these at a race? I thought it was weird-slash-cool so I logged on to the site to check it out.

The Red Star gift card instructs you to log on their Gift Card site, a site they only use for promotional stuff like this.

You simply fill up your cyber cart with sunglasses, and pay a 9% fee for your purchase. The catch is that the 9% fee cannot be paid with the gift card. You pay for the glasses ONLY with your gift card, and the fee you must pay with your personal credit card.

Not sure how I feel about this. Do you think it's a scam? Are the glasses even good quality? If anyone has tried this before, let me know.

Here is the gift card site: http://www.redstargiftcard.com/

Moving on.....

Here is my bib number!

(yes, those are my Thanksgiving/Fall decorations in the background...don't judge.)

Another Mug Shot Picture with the number hee hee....

At the Expo, the $9.99 Guy was there! I don't know the real name of his company, but I call him the $9.99 Guy. He's the guy that sells all this awesome running stuff for only $9.99!!! You know my frugal fanny loves that kind of deal!!

Because the $9.99 Guy booth is so crazy and crowded, you don't really get to try anything on so I had to guess at the sizes. But when I modeled them last night they all three fit perfectly! I'm so excited about these.

Each one of these shirts was regularly $65.99! Winner.

I also got a 6-pack from from $9.99 Guy.

Of socks, that is.

Isn't the argyle design cute?

Start 2 Finish Events was giving away free T-shirts from past races. I have about 1,256,983 cotton T-shirts, so I grabbed some Tech T's that they had up for grabs!

The blue one is mine:

And I got the white one for Tom...since he's not a runner, I thought he could wear it to work in the yard and stuff when it's hot out. Or maybe he'll take up distance running because of this free technical T.

One booth was giving away free GU! I got orange, which I've never tried before. And Espresso Love. Which I love.

I wish I could have browsed around the Expo longer, but I was short on time and money so headed back to Tunica. I love race Expo's!

Some of you may have noticed that I took down the 'Road to St. Jude' page with my training plan on it. I did so because I had totally NOT stuck to my plan, and having it as it's own page on the blog was just staring me down, reminding me of my epic failure to train.

Seriously, though, after seeing all the workouts that had to be crossed off, I didn't want to be a bad influence on anyone. But if any of yall are at all interested in seeing the original plan just leave a comment on this post and I'll send it to you.

I'm sure if I had stuck with it, I would be 10 pounds lighter and 10 minutes faster but o-well!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Please check back next week for some fun 'Before and After' posts!