This weekend was a big deal for me.

Yes, I ran a half marathon in another state. Yes, I successfully finished the race without actually dying (it was close…more to come on that).

However, something even bigger happened.

I officially became a common-law sister.

(Cue the music, balloons, champagne and Oprah gifs)

WOO-HOO!!!!!!!

For those of you who may not be as familiar with this important legal term, it is the legal process of de-facto becoming one’s sister after a significant number of years of acting in such capacity. It’s kind of like a common-law marriage minus the tax benefits.

It is with pleasure that I introduce you to my common-law siblings:

From left to right: Em (Code Name: Goobs), me, Fran (Code Name: Shurbert) and James (Code Name: Gordi).

**Please note that one common-law sister, Grace (Code Name: Kloonkers) is missing as she was doing big things – aka getting ready to graduate college. We shall continue our weekend celebration in her honor. #AlmostAdulting

It might be time for me to provide some back-up history here. I have known the Webbers since elementary school and they really just can’t get rid of me. Em is Luke’s age, Fran is my age and James is Mara’s age. (Side note: Mom & Dad couldn’t handle a fourth child so poor Grace is without a Fiorio counterpart.) We have a lot of memories together – from re-creating the Sk8r Boi music video to making fruit pizza to trying to get into shape to BOT-ing (don’t ask what BOT stands for) – we have basically done it all.

So when Em mentioned to me that James was moving to Seattle, I suggested that we go the weekend before one of my work trips to visit James…and run a half marathon.

Em was all about visiting James and really not about the running. Like super anti the running part.

Luckily, Fran decided to join us on our journey to Seattle and said she would run the half with me – success!! Under peer pressure, Em agreed to run the 10K (6.2 miles). No matter how hard to tried to peer pressure James, he did not cave. He did say he would drive us though (do not underestimate the importance of the getaway driver)!

At last, our Seattle trip was in the works.

We arrived in Seattle late Thursday, May 3, 2018. Em hooked us up with a super sweet hotel downtown (thanks PwC for all the hotel points).

The next day, James bused into the city and we all met up to do some exploring (which was mostly just eating because food = life). We started off by grabbing breakfast at the biscuit bitch. This place was the jam. I got this amazing breakfast sandwich on a biscuit that tasted like heaven.

We then walked to Pike Place Market where we explored all the shops, soaked in the view and took pictures with pigs.

Afterwards we decided to mosey on over to the space needle. On our way we caught a glimpse of Seattle’s finest: a mermaid mural.

The mural, painted by Seattle artist Crystal Barbe, is on the wall outside of a sex shop. This is no random mural. The shop commissioned Barbe to create a mural that would demonstrate the shop’s support of positive body images, sex and females. A bit unusual, but check out the artwork! I mean that sea eel thing actually looks like its jumping off the wall.

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Eventually we made it to the space needle.

Honestly, I know that the space needle is a Seattle classic, but I really thought it would be cooler than it was. Like, it’s just really not that attractive. Typical 1960’s…their style was always a bit whack.

We left the space needle, got some juice and wandered a bit before I had a genius idea.
BIKING. We should totally rent bikes and go on a ride.

For those of you that know me, you know that this is really out of character. I’m not really a bike rider. The seat hurts my butt, I’m very unstable and I have a legitimate fear of hitting humans because I can’t steer very well.

But the Webbers (who were raised by a serious biker in Mama Webbs) were about it. So we all rented bikes and it was then that Fran had her genius idea.

THE OVERLOOK. We should totally ride our bike to Volunteer Park which has a great overlook of the city.

We google it up on our phone and it doesn’t seem that far away so we all agree on the plan.

Soooo there was a fatal flaw in our plan. Even though we knew we were going to the top of a hill, we did not really factor in the fact that we would have to bike ride to the top of said hill.

Has everyone ever mentioned that Seattle is pretty hilly? Like steep hills…not like rolling hills.

THIS BIKE RIDE WAS STRAIGHT UPHILL. LIKE 100% JUST UP AND UP AND UP.

Now keep in mind that none of us were prepared for this. Half of us are wearing jeans, I’m wearing flats that have zero grip and we have about zero water. We were real winners out here.

In the beginning we were all good sports about it. Ya know, we’re pushing through the pain and getting our bike up the hill. At the steep parts we would get off and push our bikes up the hill, but we would spend most of the time riding.

As we kept going further it was less riding and more pushing. By the end we were just doing a straight shoulder exercise as we pushed our bikes up these incredible hills. Who needs a gym when you can just do a bike push?!

It’s at this point that I would like to pause and give a serious shout out to James. James really did not want to bike (have I mentioned that he and exercise don’t really go together?). But James was a really good team player. He was positive (mostly) and only stopped a few (several) times for a break. I’m not going to lie, if I was in his shoes I would have dipped out five minutes into the ride. So props to you James!

Now that we have all that positivity out of the way…the truth of the matter is WE DIDN’T EVEN MAKE IT TO THE PARK.

No seriously, after all that we were just like nope.

About half a mile away from our destination we just ditched the bikes and decided to walk the rest of the way. Except on our way we passed this mini-park and figure this was as good enough of a view as any. Basically, none of us wanted to walk any more haha. We posted up and gave our poor feet/shoulders a break. On the bright side, there really were some pretty views!

Not surprisingly, on the way back to downtown, we copped out an just ordered an Uber 🙂
We had the Uber drop us off at the “roastery” aka the fancy Starbucks. I don’t even like Starbucks coffee and even I was into the Roastery. James let all of us use his Starbucks employee discount and I got the most delicious coffee/ice cream mix.


After our exciting adventure we headed back to the hotel to shower before our night activity: going to the baseball game. We bought tickets and another one of my friends, Joe, joined us. (Joe is in the army and is stationed outside of Seattle.)

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Joe picked us up and we drove to the stadium. Now, I won’t get into details, but it did take us a bit of time to get to the stadium. We may have made a wrong turn here or there and then we may or may not have gotten called out by the Coast Guard for lying. But we eventually found parking and Joe only told me I was an annoying back seat driver about four times! (Andy usually says it seven times so this is definitely improvement).

Our seats were pretty good at the game. Now I don’t really watch baseball in general and I certainly don’t follow the Mariners, but there was two exciting things that happened at the game:

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1. Some important guy on the other team had his 3,000th hit. Apparently, in the baseball world this is a big deal. People were very hyped during the game.

(Follow-up: I just googled it, and the guy’s name is Albert Pujols)

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2. Joe almost got into a fight. 

Okay, okay, not really. But he wanted to!! There was a very very drunk man sitting next to us. Said drunk man had peanuts. Drunk man decided to throw the peanuts at an acquaintance (I think it was an acquaintance) who was 20 seats over and two rows behind him. As you can imagine, drunk man did not have a very good throw and the peanuts did not make it to it’s intended target. Instead, the peanuts hit an innocent person in their face.

This somehow triggered a yelling match between the drunk man and the supposed acquaintance he was trying to hit. The drunk then left his seat to have words (not friendly words) with the acquaintance. He eventually came back and was still antagonizing people. Being that we were only two seats from him, I was quite worried we were accidentally going to end up in the middle of a fight. Joe was hoping we would end up in a fight so he could hit the man.

Alas, no fight occurred and Joe missed his opportunity. Maybe at the next baseball game.

On Saturday, we checked out of the hotel and headed north to where James lives. James picked us up from the train station and we went to get our race packets.

Honestly, this “expo” was the TINIEST expo I have ever seen for a half marathon. The room was the size of my bedroom (maybe even smaller) and there was three people there – one to hand out bibs, one of hand out the sweatshirts and one to assist. The good news is that it took no time at all to get in and out!

After picking up our stuff for the race the next day, we went to the mall to eat and shop around. Then we headed to the Webber’s grandma’s house (where James lives) and I watched the Caps playoff game against the Pens.

(Side note: I have always watched the Caps in the playoffs, but for some reason this season Andy and I have become true Caps fans. Like we watched 90% of the 80+ regular season games and I feel like I genuinely know all the players. So there was no way I was missing a playoff game, especially against our enemy: the evil Penguins.)

The situation: It was Game 5 and the Caps had won 2 and the Pens had won 2. We were playing at home. This was make it or break it time.

The Webbers all left me to go to the bookstore. I think that my angry yelling at the TV was a bit much for them. So I texted with my sister instead.

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There were some angry times:

There were some celebratory times:

There were some stressful times:

And then there were the #WINNING TIMES:

The Caps killed it and won game five with a solid 6-2 score!!! Whew.

That night, we all went to the Spaghetti Factory for dinner – a solid pre-race meal. Unfortunately, even the spaghetti and meals couldn’t help in my tragic race….

(Cue depressing music)

THE RACE:
Before we get into the actual running part, a quick fun fact about the race: The race was the “Snohomish Women’s Run”

I’m not going to lie, Joe was a little hesitant to sign up because its a Women’s Run and he is not a woman. He specifically asked me if he could sign up because he is not a woman. I’m over here like “Pshhh, of course you can sign up. You just need to support women, not be a woman!”

Welllllll, I was correct that men could sign up. But Joe was 100% correct that there were legit NO men there. Like a total of 20 men out of 1,200 people.

I told Joe that for once he could understand what it felt like to be a minority, since he doesn’t really get that opportunity often as a white male. He wasn’t buying it. Oops….sorry Joe 🙂

Anyways, the race in Seattle was one of my worst half marathons. And it was really all my fault.

1. I didn’t train
2. I didn’t even exercise that much in general in the weeks/months before the race
3. I tried to run fast. I am slow. Fast running was bad.

Before the race, Fran, Joe and I talked about our pace. I suggested that we do a 10:30 pace and everyone agreed.

AND THEN I DIDN’T DO A 10:30 PACE AT ALL.

Nope, in my infinite wisdom I was like I am just going to run at what feels right. Well for the first four miles that was a 9:45 pace. Fran kept reminding me that we were running well above our pace and I was like, no stress, we got this.

WE DID NOT HAVE THIS.

Okay, clarification: Joe and Fran had it. I did not have it.

At mile 8 I was like can we walk? So we walked.
At mile 10 I was like yeah we need to walk again. So we walked.
At mile 11 I was like just leave me – I don’t want to drag you down anymore.

And thus, Joe and Fran continued onwards like the bosses they are. Meanwhile, I half walked/half jogged for the last two miles while I told myself I never wanted to do another race.

Eventually, I did finish….THANKFULLY! It really was questionable there for a bit.

Even though I died, there were some really great things about the race:

1) Logistics: I enjoyed the race set up. The race was small enough that you could easily get around, but not so small that you didn’t interact with humans. The route was really really flat and super gorgeous. I would definitely recommend this race to someone.

2) 10K: It was nice to have a shorter distance for those that didn’t want to do the whole half. I liked being able to run with Em for the first couple of miles before she headed back to the start (she really should have taken me with her…just saying).

3) Hoodies: We got the best race hoodies!! Check out how awesome these things are 🙂

After the race we went back to James’, showered and then got dressed to go to brunch. Brunch was SUPER yummy. We also might have ordered a bit too much of food? Well worth it 🙂

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That afternoon, I took an Uber into downtown Seattle and moved back into a hotel for the rest of the week for my work trip. This was the first time I combined one of my work trips with my half marathon trip and it was a definite success.

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On to the next state!