Vegas Baby!

Good things about this race:

1. Altitude. I might never do another race unless it is at lower altitude. It's not that it made me go faster, I don't believe it did, but I was so happy during this race, it was like some kind of drug.... and I am totally attributing that to the lower altitude. It wasn't even hard until mile ten, and at the end of the race I was still happy enough to sort of hop and jump on the finish line, which has never happened to me before. Usually I limp and piss and moan through finish lines. Also, I ran through one of my walk intervals at the 10K mark, another thing that has never happened to me before.

2. I accomplished my goal, and that is a good thing.

3. I was able to banish negative self talk throughout the race, I was able to just keep telling myself I was doing well and I did not give up or give in to negativity at any point, which was a real victory for me.

4. I was not cold, because I trained up here in Denver, and had run in so much more colder weather than what was going on in Vegas, it was really no big deal for me, but I know other people really struggled with that.

What was crappy about this race:

1. There were so. many. people. It was absolutely crazy and it really did slow me down for the first three miles (my 5K split was the slowest 5K I have done in a while, and I know that is the reason), and according to my Garmin, I actually ran 13.21 miles, which I know is due to all the weaving and dodging that I had to do the entire race. So bottom line, I probably would have been a good two or three minutes faster at the finish if it weren't for how crowded the race was.

2. Because the race was at night, I really did not get much sleep that night because my feet were hurting (along with everything else), which makes it difficult to sleep. Plus, it is just difficult to wind down after such a lot of physical activity, so that kind of sucked.

3. I woke up this morning with approximately ten thousand cold sores, I am certain this is due to just the stress I put my body through.

But it was overall a good race, I had fun, which is something I have never been able to say about a previous half marathon.