Las Vegas...

Las Vegas was supposed to be my BIG EVENT! Time to hammer down and PR at the marathon. It was strange waking up, hanging out & waiting until the evening to run a race. But everything was working out as planned. Fatally it was time to race the marathon and I was at the start with my friend Mike who I planned on running the entire marathon with as we trained together For this event and both of our previous marathon PR's were 3:59. We started the race and wanted to run the 1/2 half at a nice easy pace. Finish the 1st 1/2 in 1:59 -- which we did... EASY! Right on target and ready to kill the 2nd half of the marathon. What we didn't expect was the nightmare waiting for us at mile 13.1.



Once we turned onto the Las Vegas strip we ran into 36,000 1/2 marathon runners packing the streets. Rock and Roll / Competitor Group had placed 1 foot high cones on the left side of the road giving in theory about a 3 foot wide lane to the marathon runners. However, who pays attention to 1 ft high cones when there are 36,000 runners trying to move down Las Vegas Blvd?
Slowly our pace started suffering & not because we were lacking the endurance or energy. We were literally fighting our way through 17 min/mile 1/2 marathon participants trying to keep pace for a marathon PR. Jumping on curbs, whistling at people to politely move, whatever we could do to keep running ahead. Finally after the turn around heading back south on Las Vegas Blvd I realized unless I grow wings and fly to the finish there was no way I was going to PR at Las Vegas. This was a very disappointing realization for me because it wasn't under my control. I had the energy, I wanted to run faster and harder. I couldn't do it with the crowds. I mentally gave up and just ran whatever pace I could without fighting the crowds. Mike tried to continue to fight along. I finished Las Vegas in 4:14. Mike finished in 4:06. Neither of us received our PR. Very disappointing. I knew I had Disney coming up... Could I PR there after running the Disney 1/2 marathon the day before? Probably not... What about Miami? Who knows coming off of the 39.3 mile Disney Challenge 2 weeks prior.
I needed a marathon PR bad!

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