To run in the Las Vegas Marathon you will need a race bib and the only place to get it is the Marathon Health & Fitness Expo. The Expo was held Friday and Saturday at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Since I was driving in from Denver on Friday I wanted to be there first thing on Saturday morning. My GPS “conveniently” directed me to the back door and employee parking area and so I had to “take a detour” to make it to the front entrance. Thank you Android/Google Maps. This was not a showstopper of course and I arrived about 40 minutes early before the marathon expo would actually open the doors. There was already a long line of people waiting and so I got in line and waited patiently.

Once the Expo doors opened it actually was not too bad to get registered for the race. The lines were short and in my race number section (9,000 – 9,999) actually was no wait time. I showed my confirmation sheet and my ID and I was handed my bib for the race and was good to go. I followed the signs to pick up my T-Shirt, the swag bag, and the gear check bag (actually it was inside the swag bag), and then proceeded on to the actual Expo. The registration sections were divided by the thousands. If I saw that correctly it would mean that roughly 45,000 runners registered to either run the Half Marathon or the Full Marathon. That number is just crazy.

I tried a few samples of fitness foods and drinks and then bought two extra bottles for my new Fitletic hydration belt . I am not going to use those for the race, but those are rather meant for future long training runs at home. In the past I was always carrying an extra bottle in my hand due to my old hydration belt (Nike) only having one bottle. This will solve that problem and make my training runs easier and even more enjoyable (I actually do like the long training runs).

Scroll down all the way to see additional images from the Expo.

After walking around a little bit I decided to leave. I would not need to buy anything else and I wanted to use the day for resting, hydration, and carbo loading. I have been carbo loading since Thursday already, but really want to make sure I am doing a good job. Carbo loading and being properly hydrated before the race is important and since I lost ~2 weeks of taper/training time that is the least thing I can do to be properly prepared. I did two training runs here in Las Vegas and I am happy that I can run even with my ear infection still affecting me. My hearing on the left ear is non-existent and I still have a lot of fluid behind the ear drum. According to the doc it will take weeks for it to be completely gone. Each day I am feeling a bit better and so I am hoping for a good run. I am not sure how my fitness will be holding up. Two weeks ago I was just fine, but being sick and being in bed for quite a few days is not the best preparation for a race.

Other than that the day went by quick. I watched a couple of movies at the hotel thanks to Netflix and Amazon Prime. Then I walked over to Fazolis and had a carb-hefty dinner. No, I did not eat everything you see on the picture, but I took a box with leftovers with me to the hotel. Since I had dinner at around 6.00 PM it is good to have something to “snack” at 8 or 9 PM. Pasta simply does not last that long and it is better not to have a meal or gigantous proportions anyway. I did not check out the area around the hotel when I made the reservation, but I have everything I need in walking distance. There is Fazolis (Italian) and Chipotle – both offer great food for carbo loading. As an example, I had a steak burrito for lunch, but I skipped the cheese sour cream option as well as the beans and instead had them load it up with brown rice. Across the street from the hotel is also a Starbucks which will come in very handy on early Monday morning when I will get out of town and drive back to Colorado. My plan is to leave around 6.00 AM on Monday so that I get back into Denver in the early evening.