Viva Las Vegas!!

Well we all landed safely here in Vegas. It sure is nice to feel some warmth after the bitter cold in GP...-30 to +20 is good for the soul. Here is a pic of us as we arrived at the airport....a bank of "one are bandits" awaits you! Its all about entertainment here for sure! All your senses are overwelmed with massive big screens everywhere that are trying to get you to their show, casino, or restraunt and it is a bit overwelming. But if you come with a plan of what you want to do then its not so bad. We plan to run the Six Tunnels Half Marathon and 5K at the Hoover Dam, see The Beatles Circ du Soliel "Love", get some sun and some shopping and a fancy meal. Were staying at Mandalay Bay Resort so it does not suck at all!!Erin and Lorna are checking off the "some shopping" now so i have a few moments to post!



We arrived to the race start at about 7am on Saturday morning for a 8am start. Lorna and I were running the Half and Erin was running the 5k. The start was about 20 miles east of Vegas close to the famous Hoover Dam. So we picked up our race kits that contained a nice souvenier travel mug and a green T Shirt....after all it is real close to St Paddy's and it was definately a theme for the event. It was a simply stunning venue overlooking Lake Mead and a spectacular morning! So great to have both Erin and Lorna here and were all quite excited to be here!! The Half Marathon course went 3 miles in one direction all uphill to a turnaround, downhill back to the start and a bit over 3 miles in the other direction to the Hoover Dam and back again. The first 6 miles was on new pavement trail but the rest was on loose dry gravel undulating trail wich was very hard to get a good footing in....kinda like good old snow! The race also passed through 6 different tunnels which added to the coolness of the event! Anyways I did not do a heck of alot of research on the route and was not expecting it to be as challenging as it was but I did feel quite strong throughout and was 1 minute and 31 seconds past my goal of 1 hour 30 minutes so i was quite happy with my time. It was 17th overall and second in my age group! Lorna ran a solid 2 hours and 7 minutes on this tough course and was also very happy with her time! Way to go honey! And Erin had an absolutely awesome 5K in 26 minutes and she finished in 55 place overall in a fiels of over 300 and took second in her age group! Way to go honey also! All in all a very special day that none of us will ever forget I sure. Erin and I both got plaques for our age group finishes and the race was well represented by canucks running from the cold and as Eddy the race director was giving out some prizes to us and other Canadians he commented about all us Canadian coming down and taking all the hardware back to a foreign country! Eddy was a great guy and is quite excited about his upcoming bike tour of PEI and Cape Breton the summer so we gave him some tips of some "must sees" on his adventure.
After some touring of the Hoover Dam we headed back into the Big City for an afternoon of relaxation and sun at the Mandalay Bay pools!