Wow, has it ever taken me a while to sit down and write this. I've just been so busy there hasn't been time to think about blogging, never mind actually doing it! We had a great trip to Vegas and a nice mini vacation, but now it's definitely back to real life and of course training... but more on that later this week.
Let's rewind back to the Saturday before last when I woke up and headed towards the Las Vegas Motor Speedway to run a half marathon! As I headed down the elevator of Planet Hollywood to catch a taxi to the shuttle pick up point, most people were headed back to their rooms quite intoxicated. I got a taxi fairly easily (yay Vegas!) and the driver asked me if I was headed "home" for the night, where I insisted that no, believe it or not, I just woke up! I suppose it's rather unusual to wake up at 5:00AM in Vegas.
Anyhow, thanks to the taxi driver knowing exactly where to go, I found the shuttle between the Luxor and Excalibur quite easily and hopped on the first bus. I was keeping my eye out for Brandi & Kendall, but never spotted them in the dark.
I knew it was a bit of drive as I'd been there once before, well near there anyway, so I did my best to sit back and relax and not worry about how warm of a day I heard it was going to be...
When we arrived, we made our way through the tunnel and into the speedway. I've been to a drag strip before, but never inside a Nascar stadium. It was definitely a sight to see, way bigger than I imagined. The sun was coming up and even though it was windy and chilly at first, it warmed up quite quickly. They drove the winner's prize through the crowd of people standing around while everyone ooooh'd and aweee'd. Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about, but obviously I didn't win the car lol!
I spent the next 20 minutes scanning the crowd for Brandi and Kendall and I finally found them in the restroom lineup! It was nice to see a familiar face and of course take some pre race pictures!
It sure was a gorgeous sunrise!
As we got ready to run around the Nascar track, which we would do twice during the race (once at the beginning and once at the finish), I started to think more about the course... I had looked at it very briefly and realized that we wouldn't be going very far away from here, so there was a very likely possibility that this was going to get rather repetitive.
Well here's the answer, it did. As far as courses go, I hated it. I ran 6 kilometers much quicker than I should have, like 33 minutes and then I found myself here.
An ugly dirt hill on the outside of the Nascar track and behind the drag strip. This is where they park all the motorhomes when there is a race, so the pavement is all rutted and dust was blowing in my face and yea, it was getting really hot.
I ran another kilometer and then I did something I've never ever done in a race, I turned around and ran in the opposite direction. I knew Brandi and Kendall were somewhere behind me, and I no longer wanted to do this by myself. I ran for a bit in the opposite direction then got tired of the people asking me what the hell I was doing, and parked myself for a few minutes to try to spot them.
Thankfully, they showed up shortly thereafter and off we went together. Brandi and Kendall had both just done a half marathon 6 days earlier, so their plan was just to finish and at this point, that sounded great to me.
For what I thought was going to be mostly a flat course, there were a few hills in there that surprised me. As we came up on this one though, we got the best view of the day. You can see the Las Vegas strip in the distance.
It was at this point, that we turned the corner and were back once again at the entrance to the Nascar track and the 2nd time we saw the mile 11 marker when we were not at mile 11...
Now we headed out onto the "roundy-round" track or the road course which was basically running or walking a lot in cone circles... Not exactly very entertaining. Here, Brandi demonstrates how it felt:
I guess we were about 13 kilometers in when they changed the flag from green to yellow because it was getting very hot. We continued on, stopping to take pictures whenever we felt like it.
My favorite part of the race was running down the drag strip.
After that, we came back out onto the road to once again enter the Nascar track which we would have to circle one last time before coming into the finish. It was just before this that I caught possibly the best picture of the day!
Way to go Brandi!
In the end, it certainly was no PR, not even close in fact, but I really did have a lot of fun and with my foot the way it has been, that's all I could have hoped for. So with a finish of 2:56:41, here's to another one in the books!
Thanks to Kendall and Brandi for getting me through another very hot race.
Race Review Summary
Package Pickup/Expo:
There really was no expo, just a room to pickup your package at Mandalay Bay. For a one-off race, I expected some merchandise for sale, but there was nothing.
Price/Value: $95
For an out-of-town race, it was a pretty standard price. If they were going to be doing this race again, I would be griping more about the course, but it was part of the theme I suppose.
Aid Stations:
There seemed to be lots of them for the size of race it was.
Course Difficulty:
Wasn't very complicated other than the uneven broken pavement in places.
Medals:
I'm glad they put some effort into these, I think they turned out great!
