The Aftermath

When I got back to the hotel yesterday afternoon, the girls were laying down. As I mentioned before, Lonnie had some pretty fierce blisters on her feet. That's a miserable thing, for sure! I showered, put on clean clothes and crawled into bed. Aaaahhh.
(here we all are - Kristine, Lonnie, Dawn, Donna, Dixie, Johnette) We called the other girls (my mom and friends) to tell them we were ordering pizza - delivery! - did they want something? We ended up ordering a bunch of food...it'll be ready in 45 minutes. Next thing I knew, there was a knock on the door - is that the pizza already? I guess Kristine and I had both fallen asleep. I took the food up to the other girls, who were also eager to see some grub! Then, I came back down and we pigged out. We basically just layed around, watched a movie, napped, etc. all afternoon. It was perfect!
I called Troy later in the afternoon, to see how he was doing. He had gone back to Mike's, showered, napped and ate too, so he was now on the road back to KC and feeling pretty good.
I can only lay around so much...I talked Kristine into walking with me to find some dinner. We walked down to TGI Fridays, which was just a few blocks away, and ordered some appetizers. Terry called to see how the events of the day went, so I filled him in a bit. And then Steve also called to check in on us, so I gave him a quick update. We sat there eating for a bit, chatting - I gotta say, you can't really pull off a weekend like this with just anyone...Kristine and Lonnie were perfect roomies for the weekend! I enjoyed chatting with Kristine and getting to know her a bit better. We packed up the remaining vittles and toted them back to the room for our ailing friend. It wasn't too long after that, actually, that we called it a night and crashed!
So, this morning we all packed up to head home. It's kinda sad that the time went by so quickly, but it was good seeing everyone and participating in an event all together. We took several picks after breakfast, and then Lonnie and Kristine had to head back to Chicago. The rest of us sat in the lobby and chatted for a while.
We were talking about, "what next?" for all the girls.
It sounds like they really enjoyed the experience and would like to continue walking and perhaps do another event like this in the future. Right on! 5 more people on the fitness bandwagon!
Side note - isn't this a neat pic? It's a little fireplace in the hotel lobby. Though my mother flew to St. Louis, she was riding home with me. We needed to get going. We ended up driving Dixie and Johnette to the airport, since we would pass right by it! It was nice that they didn't have to worry about catching a shuttle or train. We dropped them off and hit the road for KC. We actually only stopped once, in Columbia, and otherwise drove right on through. I think we were both pretty ready to get home, and I have to work tomorrow, so I didn't want to get back too late.
That's about it as far as St. Louis. What a great weekend!
Troy and I have since talked to assess our efforts this weekend - we're feeling like we accomplished exactly what we were supposed to. It was a great time of training, and we are both feeling a little more prepared for the ironman. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure you ever feel totally prepared, but judging from the back-to-back efforts and our recovery, we're feeling pretty good!