Dick’s Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon Weekend- Part 1

Holy Moly. What a weekend! Thursday afternoon Chris and I flew out of STL for Pittsburgh to spend the weekend hanging out with the Dicks Sporting Goods #RunFor Campaign Social Media Influencers. I was so incredibly blessed and humbled to be a part of this amazing group of people! The weekend was jam packed with so much that I’m going to break up my recap into a few parts.

Me, Ryan, Danica, Calvy, Linzay

They flew us in on Thursday, we met up and had a nice dinner. Friday we got to go to the expo VIP style, an hour before it opened to the public.

We were able to walk around to some of the vendors, and we found the huge Dick’s Sporting Good area at the expo. They had a photo shoot area set up, so of course I took advantage of that…

They also had a huge wall set up with the names of all the runners, they were going to have it at the starting line also. I took about 10 minutes to find my name.

I love that the mini store area that they had set up had the #RunFor posters up everywhere, and even had the videos playing as well.

After looking around the expo for a bit we got to attend the press conference, where we learned that Dick’s had paid to fly out 37 Boston Runners who didn’t have the opportunity to finish the race in Boston. We also learned that Pittsburgh has a sister city in Mexico. Then it was time for the ribbon cutting and opening the expo to the public. The line for the expo was literally out around the building! It was craaaazy!

From there we went down to Market Square. Dick’s had set up a mock finish line festival to get the city in the celebrating spirit. You could run down a “finish line” and get a medal. They had the drum line that plays at the steelers game and it was just a fun event.

The kids were the cutest. They danced their little hearts out. Loved it!

We headed to Sonoma Grill for lunch, I ordered a Cuban. It had pulled pork instead of the usual roasted pork. It was really good. I’m usually not a huge fan of different takes on the Cuban sandwich since I grew up on the “real deal” but I was impressed.

While we were sitting outside eating one of my twitter followers came up and introduced herself to me. I love meeting readers and followers! That was one of my favorite moments of the weekend for sure. After lunch we had some down time and I was able to get some work done, and start getting ready for our cocktail dinner!

I don’t get to dress up often, so I was kinda excited. I found a dress on clearance at Target for $8 months ago. I didn’t know when I’d ever wear it, but it had pockets so I couldn’t pass it up. My shoes were also a target find, $15!

I loved getting to dress up and feel super girly… even though I was covered in bruises from CrossFit!

The VIP Cocktail Dinner was hosted by Fantasy Health & Fitness – an organization started by Coach Mike Tomlin from the Pittsburgh Steelers. Coach Tomlin was one of the speakers for the evening.

Along with Coach Tomlin, we got to hear from Ryan Clark, one of the players from the Pittsburgh Steelers. We also got to hear from Steve Bell, who was featured in the very first #RunFor video.

It was a great time and the view from Le Mont was stunning. I’ll be totally honest, I did NOT expect Pittsburgh to be that “pretty” to look at. I mean, its the city of Steel… but the view did not disappoint!

All that was just Friday! I’ll be back throughout the week with recaps of our tour of the Dick’s Sporting Goods Headquarters, dinner with Steve Bell, and of course the Race Recap (Spoiler: I set a nearly 20 minute PR!!!)

Have you ever been to Pittsburgh? Do you ever travel for races?

I was compensated for this campaign with Dick’s Sporting Goods. All thoughts and opinions are my own