After sixteen half marathons, I have finally discovered how to motivate myself to actually train: Billy Currington.

Who? What? Why?

I know, so many questions. Honestly, I’m just as shocked as you are. I mean I like Billy and everything but he’s not my ride or die (I’m talking about you Andy Grammer!). But apparently being able to stay alive post race and enjoy a Billy Currington concert was enough motivation for me to train.

Cheers to Billy and finally not dying during a half-marathon!

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Before there was Billy Currington there was Delaney. You may remember Delaney from Vegas (Half-Marathon #6) but Delaney has been one of my besties since our memorable friendaversary (September 9, 2013). Delaney is fun, way-too organized, a great dancer and a better friend. The worst part about Delaney?

SHE KEEPS MOVING FARTHER AND FARTHER AWAY FROM ME!

Nope, I’m not angry about this at all.

At first it was from Alexandria to Washington D.C.. I wasn’t exactly excited but I could manage. But then she packed up all her stuff, sold her condo and traveled across the country, landing in Denver.

Don’t worry I am working through my abandonment issues with my therapist already.

Just kidding 😂😂 I am very happy for Delaney and support her. And just miss her from afar. And constantly bombard her with cat memes begging her to come back. No biggie.

Needless to say, when Delaney reached out about a Billy Currington concert in Denver that her friends were going to, I immediately jumped on the possibility of coming to visit and knocking out a half marathon at the same time. And in true Delaney fashion, she was 100% down for the adventure.

GIRLS WEEKEND HERE WE COMEEEEEEEE.

Although I was incredibly excited to visit Delaney (and have a child-free weekend…who are we kidding? 😁), I was beyond nervous about the race. Not only was the Billy concert the same day as the race but we were running in Denver which is 4,000 ft higher elevation than what I am used to. I spent the week before the race googling, “how to quickly acclimate to high-elevation” and let me tell you Google did not make me feel good. Basically the advice was: get there a few days early to acclimate (not happening), drink lots of water and no alcohol (a girls weekend without alcohol?!?) and don’t do any strenuous physical activities (hahahahahahahaha).

I decided we just had to hope for the best. 🤷‍♀️

I flew in Friday morning and Delaney picked me up from the airport. After catching up over breakfast and stopping by Delaney’s swanky apartment (more on that later), we drove out to visit Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

I can 100% understand why artists would want to preform there. It is **gorgeous**. Obviously, its still gorgeous if you’re an attendee but I’m not going to lie, it doesn’t exactly look comfortable. Imagine concrete bleachers with no back support. Oh god, just typing this is making me realize how old I sound right now…. haha

You know what else didn’t look comfortable? All these crazy people using the venue for exercise!!!

There is a small museum open to the public that provides information on the venue and performers that have been there throughout the years.

It was in this small museum that I really started to stress about the race tomorrow. See, they had a nice, informative display about “Health at High Attitude.” In a direct quote:

“A simple but important fact about traveling to high altitude is that there’s less air…Your body needs oxygen to survive. At high elevation you can feel like you are breathing through a straw.”

Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre Visitor Center

Like the good friend she is, Delaney picked up on my stress. (It may have also been me grabbing her arm and panicking while I asked her, “DID YOU READ THIS?!” But it definitely could have been that Delaney is just good at reading emotions since I was pretty subtle about it all.)

To ease my full on panic mode, Delaney recommended that we do a short and slow run to practice before the race tomorrow. We headed to Sloan Lake and did an easy two mile run.

I am happy to announce that I did not pass out, faint or have a heart attack on our run. SUCCESS! Aka I was basically ready to slay it during the half marathon the next morning.

(This creepy cat screaming sideways in this picture just makes all my dreams come true hahaha)

That night, Delaney and I went out to dinner with Chelsea who is the girlfriend of Delaney’s old roommate, Wade. We went to Dio Mio, an Italian pasta restaurant. Ever since we have had an Italian living with us (oh hey Ludo!), my expectations for Italian restaurants have risen. However, I was very excited for Dio Mio – not only did they use the Italian names for the pasta (a good sign the food won’t be too americanized) but all of their pasta dishes sounded delicious. The restaurant was popping by the time we arrived which we took to be a good sign. Unfortunately, that was the last positive sign we had.

The service? Mediocre, borderline absent.

The portion sizes? Barely enough to feed my toddler.

The prices? Way too high considering what was offered.

But the worst part? The inexcusable part? I LITERALLY COULD MAKE BETTER PASTA! And I’m not even some pasta connoisseur! The ingredients didn’t mesh well together and I’m not sure that any of us finished all of our food (and it wasn’t because we were so full).

[[Editor’s Note: At the time of writing this very delayed post, I have learned that Dio Mio is closed for a remodel and a menu refresh. So there may be some benefit in trying the restaurant again once it reopens. But proceed with caution..]]

After dinner, we returned home and chilled since the race was the following morning.

I cannot express how happy I am to report that we had PERFECT weather for this race. This never ever ever happens to me. But Denver came in strong with sunshine, no humidity and the perfect short-sleeves running weather.

As our main goal was completion without dying so we could enjoy Billy Currington that night, Delaney and I agreeded to maintain a slow and steady pace throughout the run. And, amazingly, we did just that! There was one time during the race (around mile 11) that we decided to pick it up at the end and after a minute I was like “uhhhh Delaney I may or may not be able to breathe” so we very quickly toned it back down to our chill slow run pace. But otherwise, I am incredibly proud to say that I did not die and I 100% did better than my last half marathon (not that it’s hard to do better than a half-marathon you ran in the middle of an actual snowstorm…Thanks Kentucky).

THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THE RACE:

1. Easy to Access: The race was about 20 minutes north of the city and was extremely simple to get to. The directions were easy to follow, there was ample parking and we could quickly get in and out of the race. This of course was probably helped by the fact that there were not that many people running the race. Between the half marathon, marathon, 5k and 10k there were less than 300 runners.
2. Packet Pick-Up: The packet pick-up was the morning of the race and that was SO nice. I never realized how great it would be to not have to drive to some random out-of-the-way store/place the day before to pick up your bib. Definitely one of the benefits to having a smaller race!
3. Perks: They had two of my absolute favorite perks – comfy running shirts AND free pictures!!! Anddddd on top of it all, the shirts were purple! Free pictures and purple shirts?!? A dream come true for a girl like me.

4. Friendly Crowd: As you can probably imagine, with such a small race there was not a huge crowd cheering the runners on. However, Delaney and I happened to running a couple minutes ahead of a woman who was running her first half-marathon. She had a whole fan club with her (literally three friends with signs and a dog) and they followed her around to different spots on the race course. Since we were only a few minutes before her, we saw them about 8 different times during the race. By the third or fourth time, they starting cheering for us as well. It was like we had our own personal cheerleaders and I won’t deny that I definitely picked up my pace when I would see/hear them.

(I really wanted to take a picture of them for the blog but couldn’t figure out a way to ask that didn’t sound completely creepy…so just use your imagination please of three people and a dog)

THINGS I WAS NOT THE BIGGEST FAN OF:

1. Course Route: Okay so the biggest downfall to this race was the course route. There was about 60 seconds of beautiful scenery while running (there was a lake that we ran next to at some point). But other than this, the race was flat nothingness. I mean it wasn’t hilly which is nice but honestly there was nothing to look at and the route genuinely felt never ending. Also, the beginning of the race was on a sidewalk and for the first two miles it was incredibly crowded. I wish start times had been staggered a bit to avoid this overcrowding.

2. Bathrooms: There were just not enough bathrooms. I had to pee so bad and literally had to run five miles before finding a bathroom! Do you know how hard it is to run with a full bladder?!

Overall, I’m glad Delaney agreed to run with me and it was nice to have actually trained and be able to walk afterwards. It’s the little things in life….

After the race, we relaxed for a bit at Delaney’s apartment. Have I mentioned how swanky her apartment is? No I’m not even exaggerating here:

• First, her apartment has a fancy-pants pool. Which in itself is nice but not over the top

• But what about the DAILY trash pick-up AT YOUR DOOR?!? I mean what I wouldn’t give to just be able to put my trash outside my front door and call it a day…

• Yet, what really threw this over the edge of bouginess was the special “Dog Washing” room. Yes, you read that right. There is a special room to wash dogs. Ummm what?

• Of course, my favorite part of Delaney’s apartment was not all her #fancy and #high-class living. Nope, it was ❤️❤️Rickie ❤️❤️. Just go ahead and call me the cat photographer whisperer

Once we had recuperated from our race, we met up with some of Delaney’s friends at a bar. Our plan was to just pop in to say hi before returning home and getting ready for the Billy concert that night. Except what really happened is that Delaney and I remembered how fun we are when we go out and long after her friends had left, Delaney and I were drinking, eating and making new friends (read: sitting down at tables and forcing people to talk to us haha). Before we knew it, we realized the concert was about to start and we needed to high tail it across town to get there.

Have I mentioned lately how great Billy is? He just has such a vibe to him and his concerts are always a blast (this may or may not be the third Billy concert that Delaney and I have attended together). Needless to say, we also had a great time at this concert.

Delaney had a few friends that had gotten VIP tickets which came with free alcohol which they so politely shared with us when they came to visit us in the lowly general admissions level. We also met a group from Montana that we danced and drank with. There was one poor Montanan soul that was enamored by Delaney (I mean who wouldn’t be). I won’t get into the details on this blog post but just know the poor guy was bitten by the Delaney Love Bug (common side effects include buying us lots of drinks, obsessive texting, and an inability to get a hint).

After the concert ended we went to a dive bar before heading back home. By some miracle, we were not hungover the next day. So of course we did what one should do on their last day of kid-free vacation? Keep drinking!

The Denver Broncos were having a home game that Sunday and Delaney’s friends were tailgating. I know that Washington technically has a football team but it was completely different being in a city where the stadium is actually in the city. Delaney and I were able to take a quick Uber to the stadium and not have to drive an hour+ to suburbia or go on a two hour long Metro adventure.

While we didn’t have tickets to the game, after the tailgate ended we went to a bar located across the street (are you sensing the theme of the weekend?). We watched the game on TV, made friends with our bar neighbor and had a stranger buy us shots. At halftime we called it quits since I needed to head to the airport to fly home.

I am glad Delaney is thriving in Denver and I had a chance to visit her. I am still bitter she lives halfway across the country but I guess I never knew I needed such a good reason to visit Denver? Thanks Denver for keeping the weather solid and welcoming me to your city of transplants 🙂