It was a great 7-hour drive last weekend to Vegas. I know it seems like a lot, but I just love driving by myself. The road to Vegas from Reno is pretty straight forward so I don’t have to pay attention to any turns, and it is super empty, with  only a couple of towns along the way. By the time I got to Vegas my throat was scratching from so much car singing.

Every time I go to Vegas I do three things: hang out by the pool, watch a Cirque du Soleil performance, and eat a lot. This time was no different. Unfortunately, I had some work to do online, so I spent Sunday morning working… by the pool. Beautiful weather as always. The Cirque du Soleil show I watched this time was “Zarkana” at the Aria casino, which is actually a much larger and nicer casino than I had expected. Definitely one of the best Cirque du Soleil shows I’ve seen because it had the most acrobatics of all. The first 10 minutes is already worth the price of the ticket. As far as eating, I had pizza at “Five 50”, lots of food at the “Excalibur Buffet”, and finally a well-deserved three-course meal after my race at “Camelot”, the Excalibur’s fine dining restaurant, for only $16.

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Now, the highlight of the trip: the half-marathon. As you know, I had originally signed up for the full marathon but didn’t think I would have had enough time to train for it, so I changed it to the half. When I got to Vegas, I had a hint of craziness for a few minutes and thought maybe I should try to run the marathon anyway. I mean, how hard can it be to run for about 5 hours straight??? That way I would have reached by goal of completing 26.2 miles before my 30^th birthday and then I wouldn’t have to train anymore. Yeah, thank goodness I got my senses back. Can you imagine how many injuries I would’ve gotten? I know I have the emotional state to do a marathon, but physically I need to train more to do it right.

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Since I had been there for the same race last year and knew how things would flow, I had a pretty chill day before I headed to the starting line five minutes before the official start. The first 2 miles were awesome. Then I got a side ache. Usually I just try to breathe deeply and the pain goes away a quarter mile later. This time it didn’t work. The pain lasted for at least 5 miles, so the middle part of my half-marathon was miserable. Fortunately I was able to finish the race, but I thought for sure that I had taken over 2h30, which was my goal, to finish it. I was exhilarated when I found out I actually had done it in 2h21 minutes! Can you imagine how much faster I would’ve been if I had been feeling well the entire time? I celebrated with tons of chocolate milk as my recovery drink 😉 I really don’t understand why there are no other night time races around. It was such a fun weekend. Can’t wait to go to Vegas again next year!

I run for chocolate

I did it again!