Race: Las Vegas Rock & Roll Half Marathon
This will be one of the trips that I as time passes I will look back be able to focus more on what was great about the trip versus what was not. In that vein, I will start out with the ‘not’ so I can get to all the fun and good times.
I woke up the day after getting back from McAlester a little sore. Not too unexpected seeing we just had a 16 hour drive the day before, but Kimberly said she felt fine. I didn’t think anything of it until I went out for my run a couple hours later. Originally we had the planned on doing the Half Marathon at the coming weekend’s Las Vegas Rock & Roll Marathon. Only seeing I have been pretty much doing Marathon quantity training miles per week (and I needed 20 miles that day not 13) I was fairly sure I would switch over the do the full and just treat it as a training run for the upcoming Chang’s Full in January. Which meant my plan for that Monday was 12 miles or so. Only as soon as I started to run I felt my right hamstring was sore. Hey, we are used to soreness in certain areas, so I just decided to keep running and it would go away. Problem was as soon as I picked up the pace after my warm-up - OUCH, it felt like I ripped the whole thing from the back of my knee. I hobbled home as the realization that I was likely at least fairly injured started to sit it. I won’t bore you with lot’s more, but the story ends with I was still jacked 6 days later when it was time to run in Vegas. The good news was that as long as I didn’t push the speed too much I could run - so I was able to run. The great news was that while a little painful to go at her pace, I was able to run with Kimberly and we crossed the finish line together (a great photo opportunity)!
Now the rest of the great parts of the trip… It was Vegas remember, so you know there was fun to be had. The first night in town we checked out the new City Center area, or at least the parts that were open. This place is going to be amazing if it ever gets to what it was to be. Makes me wonder though with all the economy issues if this will be one huge casualty. In the meantime, it truly is a ‘City in a City’ (and to think we used to say that about some individual hotels. A cool aside, I think they named one of the Hotels in City center after the Granddaughter (Aria). Of course we did a whole lot of walking around; the Venetian Shoppes, Caesars’ Forum, The Fashion Show, etc. Got some incredible shopping deals because of all the options and the economy. Kimberly had her first Wolfgang Puck Pizza, we had a nice meal at ‘The Company Store’, and of course one night did the carbo load at the Paris Buffet.
But this trip was all about the race and hanging with our runner friends. One really cool aspect was that even though it was not a ‘local’ race, we still got to hang with a bunch of running friends. Quite a few of the West Valley Runners (a local run club we run with) were in town to run the Half and the Full. They are a bunch of great folks and we didn’t get to hang with them as much as we would have liked, but we did catch up a couple of times. Sunday night we missed them sounds perhaps like it could have been a fun one. We heard something about Coyote Ugly, crazy drinking, belts, welts, etc (we will keep quiet on the rest :-). We were also able to connect up with some runner friends we have come to know from Twitter (Kimberly’s friends really). It was nice, we hung a little at the expo, and had a drink with them at Mandalay one day. I’m sure it will not be the last time we hang with that crowd…
All in all, like I said a great long weekend in Vegas. I might be bummed about the hamstring, but I got to run down the Las Vegas Strip with my wonderful wife, see a bunch of friends, eat at some great Vegas places, and just hang in town we love. Heck if I would have stayed home it would have been to clean the pool and do yard work - I’ll take the jacked hamstring please…
Some PICS HERE