My third marathon is in the books.  I completed the Las Vegas Marathon in 4:04:56.  While I am pleased with the time, I have a nagging feeling that I could have done a little better.  I created a page with an in-depth race report and a few photos here.   Please click that link to read more about the race.

 

The rest of the weekend was fun, even though I spent much of it quite tired.  Maggie and I met up with our friends Dan and Marcy, who both came into Vegas to spend some time with us.  Also, my friend Anthony had recently moved out to the Las Vegas area, and we were able to get together.  Saturday we all dined at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant at the MGM Grand.  Afterwards, I headed to bed for a good night's sleep while everyone else hit the town. 

Sunday night after the marathon, I was less than energetic, but still managed to go to the ESPN Zone at New York New York for some food and beer.  Marcy had left for home, but Dan was still around, and we met up with Anthony again.  Monday, Dan, Maggie and I wandered The Strip, and we had a beer at as many bars as we could handle.  That evening, we had an amazing steak dinner at Smith & Wollensky, and we followed that up by seeing the Cirque Du Soleil show Ka at the MGM Grand.  The show was pretty wild and was extremely interesting, but we were all rather worn out and think each of us nodded for a few seconds at various points.  Still, it was quite entertaining.

 

Unfortunatley, nobody had any luck gambling.  And I mean no luck.  Oh well, you can't win 'em all.  We all had fun and we all made it home safely.  I guess that's what counts.  And also important was that marathon was basically a success.  I would love to have broken four hours, but there's always next time...

Thank you, UCLA!  Thanks to that win over USC, the Gators are on the way to the National Championship game!  Had USC beaten UCLA, I really wouldn't have been too upset if they had been #2 over UF.  The schedules were comparable, and they had looked more impressive.  So I could certainly see the rationale of having them #2.  But I do think UF is clearly more deserving than Michigan.  UF's schedule was much more difficult and UF won their conference.  I think that was enough to tilt the scales... 

Now... sure, the Gators are underdogs to Ohio State, and deservedly so.  OSU was fabulous all year.  But I still think the Gators have a fighting chance.  OSU hasn't played anyone with a defense as good as UF's, and thus UF is much more battle-tested than they are.  (Michigan and Texas way back in September were the only halfway-decent teams they played all year).  Hopefully that'll give UF an edge.  So I still think OSU is likely to win.  But I wouldn't be shocked if that's not the case.  We shall see... 

So, the Red Sox finally did pull the trigger on those long-rumored deals for Drew and Lugo.  Ugh, I'm not sure I agree with these.  For a while, I really agreed with most of the deals Theo Epstein made.  I liked the fact that he was a SABR guy and emphasizes things like OPS.  I still think that's a good approach, but I think he ignores too many other factors.  Like injury history and whether or not a guy has the make-up for a big market.  It seems as though a lot of GMs just don't pay attention to this.  Some guys are renowned for folding under pressure.  So why would you go after a guy with a reputation like that if your city is a constant pressure cooker?  Sure, JD Drew is a nice OPS guys.  But he's always hurt, and as we know, the knock on him is that he doesn't like pressure.  That does NOT sound like a guy who should be getting $70M to play in Boston.  And $9M/year for Julio Lugo?  That makes no sense.  How much are the Sox still paying Edgar Renteria?  That's a lot of money for shortstops...

Of course, the Sox aren't the only team paying insane amounts of money to mediocre players.  Garry Matthews Jr, Ted Lilly, Gil Meche...  What the heck is going on?  These guys are all going to be earning over $10M per season.  That is completely nuts.  Baseball may  have labor peace now because everybody is making a ton of money.  But that probably won't last forever.  I tend to side with the owners during labor unrest, but I may find that difficult next time.  If they run into finanical problems again, it'll be their own damn fault for offering ludicrous contract to crappy players...

Well, Maggie and I are just about ready for Vegas.  We leave tomorrow morning.  And the marathon of course is Sunday morning.  I would love to break 4 hours, but I'm guessing I'll come in around 4:05 or so...  I'll still be happy with that.  It'll still be a decent improvement over my last one (4:17).  The weather forecast calls for very nice running weather (about 40 degrees at the start, high of 54, partly cloudy).  So I won't be able to complain about the conditions (knock on wood).  I finally took a peek at the elevation chart for the course, and it's hillier than I thought.  Ugh.  Nice, steep hill from about mile 11 to mile 18, I think it was.  But it's nicely downhill for the last 3 or 4 miles.  We'll see how that affects things...

And that's enough for today...