RACE- Once again I ended up running the Rock N' Roll Las Vegas Marathon. One thing that I both love/hate about this race is that it starts at 4:30 in the afternoon, so I had the opportunity to not be in a rush earlier in the day but also have to patiently wait for the afternoon to roll around. Got to the runner's village about an hour and a half before the start of the race, because there were so many people when combining both the half and full marathoners in one event. Gun goes off and from the beginning I try to settle into my goal pace of around 6:30-6:35 per mile. Quite honestly for the first couple of miles I was shocked of how stiff my legs were feeling, considering that I thought I had tapered just right for this race. After about 7-8 miles in, the legs started to feel better, and I was able to start getting into a good rhythm. Half marathon split was around 1:25:15, which made me a bit worried for the latter miles to come, but I was feeling really comfortable at this point. Once I made my way to about mile 20, I knew that I was going to be able to safely break three hours and run a personal best time. For miles 21-23, we run through a very confusing flat mini-golf course, and end up making several sharp turns throughout. Being that it is very dark during this point in the race, I somehow lost about 1 minute by making a wrong turn on the course, so I had to back track to get back on the correct route on the course. As much as this upsetted me, I tried to stay positive as I made my way towards the finish. Came through with a new personal best and my first sub-3 hour marathon! Overall I am very happy with how this fall racing season has went. I was able to PR in both the full and half marathon distances, and most importantly enjoy each race that I ran. I am still planning on running one more half marathon on Thanksgiving, as a part of the runtastic events, but I don't necessarily know if I will race it competitively. Probably will take a few days to recover and just reflect on my past races.
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