I ran a 9-11 memorial race this morning. I picked this race for 2 reasons: 1. It is one of the only road races in Vegas that is longer than 5k. 2. I thought that a race benefiting the families of the people who died in the terrorist attacks would be a good race to support. I guess that I am a fan of the whole patriotism thing. The race itself was billed as a 9.11 kilometer race, and I assumed coming in that it would not actually be 9.11k. I got to the course at 5:00am, and decided to check things out as part of my warm-up. What I saw helped me realize how beneficial it can be to have the complete support of local police, fire departments, and city officials. The entire course was marked exceptionally well, as cones blocked off every single side street along the race course, with additional cones marking every single turn. I feel like it was literally impossible to go the wrong way, and it made the pace car completely unnecessary. It was also kind of cool to race in a situation where streets were shut down so completely. In many big races I have been in we only get a lane or two on the road, whereas here we were in the center of downtown Las Vegas, and we had entire streets shut down. On the negative side, there was not a single mile marker during the race (the race director, who is not a runner, did tell me he would fix that for next year), and the end result was that the course was short. The race started at 6:10am, with temperatures at 80 degrees at the start. There was some wind during portions of the race, but I doubt that the wind had much of an effect on times, maybe 5-10 seconds tops. There were a ton of turns during the race, and that slowed me down some, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be prior to the start. It is hard to know how much the turns cost me. The course was as flat as you will find here in Vegas. There was a mild elevation drop throughout the race, which you gained back in the last half mile, but even that didn't really seem like a true hill as I barely even noticed I was running uphill. Overall I liked the course. It was a great course for spectators who are willing to run a little themselves in order to see the runners. After the horn went off starting the race I shot to the front, with two other guys attempting to come with me. I had not expected any competition, so I was a little surprised by this. Unfortunately it didn't last long as the first guy dropped off after a half mile, and the second guy fell back after about 6:00 (it ends up that he ran collegiately at Florida, but is out of shape now). From here on out I was running alone. I decided that since there were no mile markers I would just hold my heart rate steady at about 179-180 bpm for the rest of the race to try and keep the effort honest. that worked fairly well, but as the race progressed I felt like the heart rate was even, but the effort was getting easier. This may mean that I was getting into a good rhythm and I could have sped up some, or it may mean that my HR was climbing as a result of the heat, and I was slowing down in order to keep my HR steady. Overall the race felt very relaxed, so I was quite happy with how things turned out. I always felt like there was another gear if needed, and I felt like I could have held the effort I was running at for a fair amount longer than I did. I finished with a total time of 27:21 (the official results are way off). Second place was about 2:40 behind me, and third place was about 2:50 back. I only beat the third place finisher by 1:20 at the 5k I ran in August, so considering that this race was only about 2.2 miles longer I think I did better comparatively. I measured the course with the blog's course tool and it measured out to about 5.3 miles. Who knows how accurate that is, but it at least gives me a reference point to base my performance on. I ran a three mile cool-down before picking up my trophy and driving home, putting me at 13 miles total counting my warm-up and the race. The trophy was actually pretty cool, as it was a solid glass replica of the twin towers, with a logo of some sort and "overall winner" etc, etc etched into the side of the glass. The trophy itself is pretty heavy. I will need to weight it one of these days. After I got home I went out and ran 8 miles to get myself up to 21 miles on the day. I ran the last 8 miles in 56:57 (26:56 for the last 4 miles).
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