The Vegas Disaster

Vegas.  What can I say about Vegas that hasn't already been said by a lot of disgruntled runners?

Running on the Strip at night was amazing.  Seeing Cheap Trick and the Jabbawockeez perform before making my way to the start line was equally entertaining.  Receiving a medal that glows in the dark (because it was a night race) was a lovely touch.

The compliments end there.

- With 44,000 runners registered for the sold out race, I was a bit surprised to find inadequate course support - through 13.1 miles, I think I grabbed three cups of water and two cups of Cytomax (during every other race I've ever done, I've picked up at least 10 cups of Cytomax and three cups of water to splash myself).

- With 44,000 runners, the race organizers should have planned post-race transportation better.  We all needed to get back to our hotels and were incredibly sore, so standing in a taxi line for two hours was out of the question.  So was walking back to my hotel, but I did it because it was actually faster and hurt less to hobble to my room than wait for a cab.  (Editor's note: there was one perk to walking back to the hotel and that was stopping at Jean Philippe Patisserie in Aria for a caramelized hazelnut milkshake.  Recovery drink of the year!)

- To the older lady who fell backward on the stairs at Mandalay Bay:  I don't know what caused you to fall, but I don't appreciate you pushing me off of you when I caught you.  i know that wasn't race related, but there were a million people in that hotel, and she happened to get in my way.

- I heard there weren't enough medals.  Shocker.  (Click here to learn about lame bandits).  I wonder if the water and Cytomax deficiency had something to do with the lame banditry.

- According to my time, I finished the tough Nike course almost 20 minutes faster than Vegas, which is strange because Vegas was flat.  So either I run really slow now or there were too many people bottlenecking the course.  I vote for the latter.  Oh...and it didn't help that I ran into a casino to place a bet, but I wasn't in there very long.

I had really high hopes for this race, especially since I had so much fun last year.  But unless a lot of major changes are made, this may have been my last Vegas race.