Charlotte Trip Recap

I was extremely nervous for my first time flying but I was excited to get some warm weather, hang out with my cousins and see another part of the country. After all the events of the morning and losing my dog, Vito. I really had a hard time leaving. In a way it made me face my fears as my mind had too many other things going on. Once I finally arrived I was happy to see my cousin Nikki waiting for me outside the gate and we proceeded to head out to wait for our other cousin Andrea to pick us up. We were staying at her house for the weekend, Nikki also previously lived in Charlotte so they had lost of idead of places to check out.

I really loved trying out the local eats, we ended up having Mexican Thursday night and Friday for lunch, we were a pleasure to be around! We ordered in some amazing pizza from Friday night and rested up for the race on Saturday. Another one of my cousin's and his wife drove to hang out for the weekend as well since they lived close.

The race was AWESOME!! It was setup as a loop course of 1.31 miles making for 20 loops to be completed by each team. You could do as an individual or a team of up to 4, and there was maybe about 35 teams. We got to pick a spot on the hillside and camp out for the day. We originally were thinking of each doing our laps and then hand off to the next person, but when Nikki came back after the first lap she looked gassed and the baton got passed. I really love the pic of her on the right as she was all excited at the start, before she realized the loop was much hillier than we were expecting. We quickly changed  our strategy to switching off each lap to get through it.

The trail was beautiful as it wrapped around a little lake and you could hear the DJ half the time you were out there. The food spread was great, and the weather slowly warmed up to about 60 by the time we finished. I forgot to snap a picture but the baton we had to pass turned all of our hands green from our sweat. We got to keep it as well, which was cool. The SWAG was awesome as well, coolest medal ever and the t-shirt also has our team name printed on the back "Run, shake your Budde", an homage to the family name. The race director was great and talked with us several times and afterwards asked for feedback. I loved the small race feel and would recommend doing a race put on by these folks at Trivium Racing. Only bummer was we missed 2nd place by a mere 1:30, where we would have received a silver record. How creative is that?!

After the race we went back to hang out and have a cookout since it was such a beautiful day, I managed to get sunburned during the race, I know....shocking, so I tried to get a little color on my legs then. We enjoyed the weather and let all 4 dogs play around outside until they were all sleeping! We had some drinks and cue the craziness, when you get my family together you can expect nothing less! It was a great day overall and I can't imagine we stayed awake as long as we did.


Sunday was a rainy day so we hung out and relaxed most of the day and for dinner we went out to experience Taco Mac, which has 140 beers on tap, it was sorted by type so it was easy to find something you liked. Let's just say a Wisconsin girl's heaven!!

Monday we were flying out, Nikki and I were on the same flight back to Detroit but it was delayed so were stuck in Detroit for the afternoon. I think it's harder being delayed on the way home since you just want to get home and relax. I missed my husband so bad, we have never been away from each other this long and after everything that happened I just wanted to hug him!