Official final stats:
Finish time: 2:04:36
Overall: 6899 out of 33257 · Division: 474 out of 3194 · Gender: 2753 out of 21124
So last time I posted I was just days away from leaving for Las Vegas and plenty nervous about what lied ahead. About 6am on Friday morning Ben dropped me off at the Metro and I made my way to Reagan National Airport to meet up with the DC Team Challenge group and head out to Vegas. Everything went smoothly and we arrived, had a group lunch, and I headed over to the race expo to pick up my swag bag and my race bib and tracking tag for Sunday. It all seems very real once you have that packet with your race number to pin to your jersey, I was super nervous! Keeping yourself occupied for almost 3 whole days when you’re just doing an internal countdown is not easy. But at least in Vegas there’s plenty of distractions. I hit the shops, restaurants, and aquarium, while trying to but on blinders to the bars every 5 feet.
The day of the marathon the full distance runners started at 4pm and the half-marathoners started at 5:30. To put in perspective exactly how many people were at this thing, over 44,000 people registered to participate, I think around 2,500 were full marathoners, that leaves a lot of people all doing the half course. We were assigned our corrals for the wave start, the first corral let out at 5:30 and the rest in 1 minute intervals after that, all of the Team Challenge people were in corrals 17-19, so we had a while to wait before we were let on the course. With that many people I had to do a lot of weaving, and since we were towards the middle of the pack there were a lot of people in front of me that were at a slower pace. Unfortunately this led to me finishing about 5-6 minutes slower than I had hoped, but I still finished and I’m pretty proud of my time none the less. I had never run at night before and my internal clock was still on East Coast time, so to still pull off the run that late in the day was an accomplishment in itself. Also, how people run int he costumes that they do is beyond me, there was one guy in a Borat bathing suit with a tall boy of Coors Light offering it to other runners, how he didn’t freeze to death I’ll never know, it was getting into the upper 30′s by the time I was halfway through.
After the race I got back to my room and got under the covers full dressed and sweaty for awhile to heat myself back up. Then I decided a hot shower was the way to go, but apparently so did everyone else and there was no hot water or water pressure! So I jumped back in bed and continued to warm up until my roommate came in after finishing and got me out of bed for a late dinner and celebratory drink (I went mojito, it was quite tasty). The next day we flew back home, I missed Ben and our cat terribly (who is making some adorable kitty sleeping noises right now btw), and I’m glad to say I accomplished what I set out to do and lived to tell the tale! I’ve kept up with my work outs, but I’m sticking with the elliptical through the cold winter months, and I’d like to find a yoga studio nearby to take some classes at, get my flexibility back. All in all I’m really glad I signed up to do this, I accomplished something not only for myself but I also raised over $3,700 for a great cause, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. So now I get to scratch ‘run a half marathon’ off my bucket list and move onto the next thing, whatever it may be!
Thank you to everyone who’s encouraged and supported me through this, your donations, kind words, and enthusiasm have been extremely motivational and I can’t express how wonderful it feel to have such amazing friends and family, you guys kick ass!
-Holly
