Hot Chocolate expo (rainfest)

With fond memories of going to last year's Hot Chocolate 5K/15K expo, I looked forward to this year's event. After all, who can turn down free chocolate?

The only thing was getting there. It poured for much of the morning today, drenching me in a 6-mile run (my shoes were not dry until four days later).

But without really knowing when it would let up, we decided to make the best of it and get in and out of the expo quickly.

Unlike last year, we were unable to park in the Gold lot, which is protected from the elements. So we parked across the street from the Georgia World Congress Center in the blue lot ($10). But at this point, the rain was just pouring down in sheets. Just getting the double stroller out of the car got my jeans totally drenched.

The water was pouring down the side of the street and on the sidewalk, so when we crossed our shoes were totally drenched! At least the weather -- and the rain -- was warm so it didn't make too much difference when we finally got inside.

When we did, we were greeted by someone at the expo handing out the little squares of chocolate as pictured above. The best was yet to come, as they had vanilla wafers dipped in chocolate and hot chocolate near the expo's exit. The little ones of course loved this!

Overall, the expo seemed small in size. I signed up for this year's Big Peach Sizzler 10K as I did last year at this time -- when you sign up at the expo you get $5 off entry and get a free T-shirt. The only shirt I don't have from this race is the orange one, so that's the one I chose!

I was also happy to see the Nuun booth in action. They had samples of their regular tablets plus ones with vitamins, which at least was new to me. I didn't introduce myself as a Nuun Ambassador but we found a couple flavors we liked (blueberry pomegranate and blackberry citrus) so we bought two tubes and got a free Nuun water bottle.

My favorite flavor of Nuun, at least until I tried the new versions.

 When we got outside, the rain had totally stopped! If we'd waited we could have gotten to and from the expo without a drop of water but that's the way it goes. Still I'll take rain and warm (about 57 degrees) over the 27 degrees it was last year.