It’s Donut Wednesday. In addition to a donut, I decided to get my coffee with cream & sugar today, which is a HUGE rarity. Long story short, I had a serious sugar rush going on. Being on the east coast, Seawheeze registration didn’t open until 1:00p, and I had nothing shorts of ants in my pants. Between adrenaline and sugar, I was bouncing off the darn walls of my cubicle all morning in anticipation.

One of my best friends was also going to try to register. Given the fact that you can only register yourself, it’s a total crapshoot if one, some or all people in your group make it in. This alone was enough to make me nervous. What if she got in and I didn’t? Then I’d be the one who’d have been all “DO THIS WITH ME PLZ” and suddenly she’s in a half marathon on the other side of North America all by herself.

Countdown to Seawheeze 2016: Registration OMG

All Morning: Anxiety

11:45a – Log into Eventbrite and fill out as much profile information as I could in advance. Logged in yesterday to make sure I remembered my password, and I bookmarked the Seawheeze page.

12:01p – Register for the Ugly Sweater Run in December, being sure to click the box to save my credit card information in my profile. Go figure you can’t just enter one in without buying something first. Weird, Eventbrite. Weird. Anyway, on 12/5 I will be running a 5K in something ugly and holiday-themed with beer at the finish line. Not a bad deal.

12:50p – Begin refreshing the Seawheeze event page about once per minute.

12:58p – Commence compulsive refresh.

12:59p – What the hell, Eventbrite… Y U LOG ME OUT?! I race to log back in. Panic ensues. What if this login screen doesn’t clear until 1:00:32.00?! That’s 32 seconds of lost time! At this point, like many white girls across the nation, I literally can’t even.

1:00p – Login clears at 1:00p on the nose. OMG TACKLE POUNCE GREEN BUTTON!

1:00:30.00p – Open up an IE window while waiting to see what happens in Chrome.

While IE is loading and gets sent to the waiting room, I switch back to Chrome and see the magical registration screen!

The next 2 minutes was a blur, as I tried to race through and answer who I was, how old was I, how fast do I think I will be in this race 11 months from now? I don’t freaking know! Anywhere there was a red asterisk for required info, I was in a tizzy.

Honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t end up registering myself as a 42 year old male who plans to finish in 3:45. That’s how frantic I was.

1:03p – “Processing”

Still in waiting room in IE. Chrome is still thinking about the information I just scrambled to enter. I’m on edge.

I. AM. IN!

I hurry to text my friend Krystle to see how she fared. Before I could even type a single character, she sent me these two magical words “I’m in!”

Once I got the confirmation screen, it took a minute to mentally grasp the fact my registration actually went through, I checked to make sure I’d put myself in the correct age/time bracket and ordered the right shorts. Speeds for me! 🙂

Anyway, I mentioned Seawheeze to a coworker last week. He thought it would be a good idea to recruit one of his buddies and make a trip out of it, and they go in too!

It was 1:01 when my backup plan (IE window) got put into the waiting room. Oomph. For the 10,017 runners that they accept each year, I’m wondering how many more attempt to register? Seeing a lot of comments online about people who were on right at 1:00p/10:00a sharp and got sent directly to the waiting room. Totally nuts.

Judging by their twitter feed, Seawheeze went from 0 to 10k in about 40 minutes. On average, that’s only accepting 250 people per minute, from open to sellout. After reading so many sad/upset comments about missing out, I feel very fortunate to have secured a spot.

Will I SEA(wheeze) any of you out there next year? 🙂