I'm finally catching up to time...

This trip to Vegas is throwing my routine off. I didn't get into my hotel room until around 2:30 am EST, no time to blog or check email. To help me get to sleep I ate the highly overpriced M&M's out of the mini bar to help get me into a sugar induced sleep. Before I knew it I got my wake up call and was at the spa to do an hour and forty five minutes on the bike. To get in it was $25, so I tried to get my monies worth in fruit and water. I finished just in time to shower and get to the trade show for our first meeting at 10 am. For the rest of the day, Lena and I had a full day of meetings. At 5 pm we met with Howard Field for a couple of drinks. Howard owns Picaboo, they sell photo books and he's a great guy. (I know he's reading this so I added the great guy comment...Just kidding Howard you are a great guy). 

Howard was telling me that he loves my blog and that it inspired him to get in shape. A year ago Howard went for a top to bottom physical. They determined everything, muscle mass, fat, BMI, etc, with advice and a plan. In the past year Howard lost 17 lbs of fat and gained 4 lbs of muscle and he took his BMI from 24 to 18 and it shows. It is incredible how people who are in shape or get themselves in shape have a glow about them. Whayda go Howard.

After dinner I went for a 70 minute run. It was starting to cool down so I put on my home made "SUCK IT UP!!!" shirt and hit the strip. I ran down as far as I could then I hit the Stratosphere Hotel and there was a fork in the road. I thought for a moment and I took the road less traveled. As I ran I could tell I was not in the best part of town. I could see that most of the shops were Latino with lots of Graffiti on the walls. There was hardly anyone around and it was at times eerie. Before I went for the run I told Lena that male runners are never noticed, so I figured that running in this type of area shouldn't be a problem and I decided to test out my theory. 

As I kept running I started passing all the bail bonds houses. They all looked the same, the OPEN sign was turned on and one person was inside just waiting for the phone to ring. At one point I passed a guy walking towards me and he looked a little scary. As I passed it looked like he turned around and came after me and I got pretty startled until I realized it was just my shadow. This happened a few times and every time my shadow scared me. Eventually I got as far as Old Las Vegas, what a dump. I was going to go down there when Alice arrived but now I'm not so sure. I passed a lot of homeless people and for about a mile I was the only white guy. When  I hit the turnaround point I just started to run back and a young black kid coming my way was kinda moving in my path so I shuffled from one side to the other, then he yelled something to me. I think it was about my "suck it up" shirt, but because I had my iPod on I didn't hear him. It's just as well because he may have startled me.

It was a good and dangerous run. My heart rate was screwed up. It was very high, which tells me that my body is way off kilter from the travel, the late night, getting up early and fighting a cold. The good thing is that I'm finally caught up. Training complete and blog updated.

Mod Bike - 1:45 /32.27 miles / 18.5 mph

Mod Run - 1:13 / 8.52 miles / 8:34 pace

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