Pre Race Report and a sneak preview…

Like Vegas, my mind is BUSY!!! I am so terrible at race recaps and pre race recaps! So much happened it is impossible to fill you all in without writing a stinking book! I’ll give it  a try but for a  good, succinct and  thorough version of our pre race activities head over to Tall Mom’s blog!

Friday was a mess. I was super busy trying to finish up last minute files and case notes but I finally finished up, got dressed and headed to our TINY airport. Off to VEGAS! It was a long day of travel and once I arrived, finally in Vegas I realized it was on Pacific time zone. Boooo. I thought it would be mountain or something. So three hour change is rough. It was 7 o’clock  PM Vegas time, 10 o’clock my time. I was tired. I came to baggage claim where Mel and I had planned to meet and saw my Tall Friend with my Awesome Aunt! I love my aunt (and friend too for that matter!), she approached Mel out of the crowd and asked her if she was waiting for me! How random and cool is that!?

It was great to connect with Mel and my family (aunt, uncle and cousin). We headed to dinner at THE best boofey (or buffet) in the world, the Bellagio! The food was out of this world. Too bad I was having a stomach pain. I wasn’t sick, just hurting. This happens occasionally when I fly. I get a very awful pain in my stomach and eventually it leads to me getting dizzy, pale, clammy, light headed, and on one occasion I actually passed out. So I knew the drill. After dinner we headed through the casino and we stopped at some slot machines. I got sweaty and light headed and had to sit down. I think it is just nerves and anxiety. It passed while my Uncle and Cousin tried to win millions…with no luck. We headed to the car and I relaxed while we drove to their house, my stomach still hurting like someone was ripping it out of my body and twisting in into knots. But once we got to their house I sat on the floor, petted their dog and visited with my peeps.  Within 15 min of being there my stomach felt better. By this time it was LATE, probably near 11 PM (2 AM for me). Ugh. We hit the hay.

We got a good nights rest and more visiting with my Aunt, breakfast, coffee and pictures with the Christmas tree:

Me and my Aunt Janet

Me and Mel!

We were off to the expo to get out packets and wander the vendors. The expo was at our hotel, or at least connected, I guess I figured if I couldn’t stay at the start line might as well stay at the expo. Right? Um, NO. Bad choice…but that is for the race recap. Any way, we were headed to the expo when I got a text from Pam telling us the expo was a “Cattle Call”. Oh great! And she was right.  We didn’t get to meet up with her, I’m not really sure what happened, SORRY PAM!! In the mess of everything I didn’t return her text and that was the last we communicated. I feel awful about not meeting up with her.

We got out packets and I made the switch from coral 13 to 9. Not a bad idea and it was super easy to do. We wandered around a bit more and finally sat down to listen to the pro runner dudes speak: Mel had a better view of the stage. The only one of these I have heard of was Meb but Scott Jurek was mighty fine to look at is a great ultra runner originally from Seattle.

Here are a few more pics from the expo and beyond:

And of course, Rock n Roll Las Vegas MUST  have a hosted bar at the expo…Duh. So do you see me in line?

NO. I did not partake of any beverages…I just thought it was quite strange to have a bar at an expo.

We were pretty excited to have our packets and headed back to the hotel to make a plan for dinner. Cheese Cake Factory it was! Unanimously we decided that was the best!  We had dinner and then headed back to the Venetian for The Phantom of the Opera. Awesome show!!! By the time that was done it was about 8:45. We still needed to do a practice run to the start line, so we were off…I said something along the lines of “think we can be back by 10?” Sure, no prob….yeah right. What a mess Vegas is. They intentionally get you all turned around inside the casinos, I swear! They hope you just give up trying to get out and plop yourself down and give your  money away. Not us, no sir- ree…

WAIT a MINUTE! THAT’S NOT ME! Oops, busted.

Anyway, we finally made our way to the Mandalay Bay after getting out of MGM Grand and back. Total time was over two hours. We hoped for a smoother trip in the morning. I was done. My brain was no longer functioning. I couldn’t think or remember landmarks. I was useless to Mel as a navigator. It was ALL up to her. So by 11 PM (or 2 AM my time) it was off to bed with a 5 AM wakeup call.

I will leave you all with a teaser for the actual race recap:

My traditional Race Pile pic

And our feet at the start of Rock n Roll Las Vegas FULL Marathon (Mel thinks we should have done the half. =) But I am still happy we did the full! It was what I went there to do, it was my battle and I could not back down…so you’ll have to read about the 15 seconds leading up to the left to finish 13.1 or right to finish 26.2.  You all know we went right… But let me tell you, 13 miles into a marathon is not a good time to give someone an out. It was tempting.)

Maybe I will do the race report tonight but for now I better get back to work and get caught up on everything that got swept under the rug this past weekend.