Eighteen months ago, I could barely run a mile. 

One year ago, I was preparing for the Army Ten-Miler. It was the first race of a considerable distance that I would run the whole thing. (It was the second time I’d run it; it was the second race I ran the whole thing.)

Six months ago, I had two half-marathons under my belt.

Tomorrow I will run my first marathon! I’m definitely nervous, but the day’s festivities helped.

We started off with some blogger breakfast at Jamba Juice:

I went for a smoothie with some banana and oatmeal on top. (Their granola had peanuts, which I’m allergic to.)

L-R: Leslie (who’s also running NYC, because she’s hardcore like that), Bobbi, Meghann, Kelly, Brie and me!

We went to the Sears Willis Tower.

Apparently, the tower is the height of 313 Oprahs. Unfortunately, this is the closest I’ll likely ever get to the big O. 

It was really high.

Like, so high that we were above the skyscrapers.

We went to Giordano’s for lunch, but this lactard stuck to a chicken sandwich while the other girls had deep-dish pizza.

And then another blogger meetup over some fro-yo:

I went for key lime. Wise choice on my part, as it was amazing.

Then we saw this creepy lady.

And the bean.

And ended the day with the final carbolicious meal: some bow tie pasta with chicken, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes at the Pasta Bowl. My mom came to meet us! I’m proud of her—she never travels without my dad, and she flew here all by herself and came all by herself to meet us at the restaurant.

No matter what happens tomorrow, I’m really proud of how far I’ve come. For the most part, I’m not too nervous. My awesome roomies are all multiple marathoners (between the three of them, they’ve run 13 marathons and qualified for Boston), so that’s helped my nerves a ton. They haven’t let me doubt myself for a second, and I’m so grateful that Meghann asked me to stay with them when we ran together at HLS. Staying with other fun, blogging, motivational marathoners has done an amazing job of keeping my nerves at bay.

All the e-mails, texts, calls, Facebook messages, tweets and blog comments are putting a huge smile on my face, and I’m so thankful for all your support.

Unless something catastrophic happens tomorrow…

THIS NEXT POST WILL BE FROM A MARATHONER.

GOOD NIGHT!!!

Or, IT’S REAL NOW.

I landed and hopped in a cab to meet up with Meghann, her sister Kelly and Kelly’s friend Sara and her boyfriend at the hotel. We walked over to Epic Burger, where we had some epic burgers. I went for turkey, to keep my sensitive stomach happy, and also got some fries so I could keep my salt levels up.

Afterwards, we went to the expo to pick up our bibs.

L-R: Me, Meghann, Kelly, Sara. Yes, we have matching shirts. Yes, we love them.

Walking into the expo was totally surreal.

Let me break it down:

I was walking into a marathon expo. Not as a spectator or a friend of a runner, not to pick up a half-marathon bib, but to pick up a marathon bib. Whoa.

You might not be totally able to see the writing on the back of our shirts, but we have our blog URLs on our shirts. Yup.

That’s my bib!

This sticker is totally going on my car.

Apparently the Little Rock marathon is pretty badass. Huge medals and Greek gods? Maybe Ben is on to something.

I also met up with E for a little chat, but no photo…yet.

It is actually way harder than it looks to keep one’s balance doing this.

We got some deep dish pizza to end our day.

I STILL can’t believe I’m running a marathon in two days.