We left off mid-day on Saturday before the race. The plan was to have a big pasta dinner on Saturday night before the race and my whole family was going to join the rest of us in the city. Late Friday night, I asked my stepmother if she thought I should call the restaurant again just to confirm the reservation for 14 on Saturday at 6PM. I've already confessed by self-diagnosed OCD I think, so being responsible for dinner for that many people of course had me concerned. Mary said "I guess you could...couldn't hurt" Well wouldn't you know that the restaurant had cancelled our reservations. Nooooo! I won't get into the annoying conversation I had with a Mad Italian Guy at the restaurant, but the end result is we didn't have a reservation anymore (even though this was the 3rd time I had called to confirm with absolute confirmation the other two times). Like I said...OCD.
My Dad, Mary and I trotted down to the concierge in the hotel to ask about recommendations. They suggested this Italian place around the corner. We went there and the only reservation they had was at 11:30PM Sat. night. No good! Luckily Mary knew of another place close by, St. Andrew's Cafe. We went there and the super nice woman had room for us. Of course there was no pasta on the menu, but they had pizza on the bar menu and rolls which worked fine. :)
Cut to Saturday at 6:00PM. We all got to the restaurant and it was great to have everyone there. I so appreciated my stepbrothers, sister in laws, and the rest of my friends making the trek into the city. It was great. When we went up to our seats, Kara, Melissa, and Donna were lagging behind a bit. When they finally got up to the table, they had these amazing shirts on. These are them in the shirts the next day.
The funniest part was that Melissa started pulling out all of these shirts and saying....Tom, you were a medium right? They had written to my entire family and got all their sizes and everyone had a shirt. I don't really have words for how happy that made me and how thoughtful it is. I loved it!
The best part about going to St. Andrew's cafe is that they have Sticky Toffee Pudding on the dessert menu which is Malcolm's favorite and definitely pretty good. So let's recap my pre-race meal.....2 rolls, calamari, 3 pieces of pizza (I would have quit after 2, but everyone at the table pretty much forced me to eat the third), a sticky toffee pudding all to myself. Does that sound like an athlete's meal or what? :) I also got my favorite words of encouragement after dinner from my sister in law. As she was leaving, she said (with a smile) "Good luck, you'll do great. Don't f*ck it up."
We went back to the hotel and I packed up for the next day. I got all of my clothes laid out for the next day and my bag packed. The alarm was set for 5AM. Time for a good night's rest. Big day tomorrow.
Lisa
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