Jeff, Rahul and I ran the Park City Marathon on Saturday. This was another Saturday marathon, which cemented my view that Saturday marathons >> Sunday marathons because you can enjoy the trip far more when you get the hard part done up front. Plus I hate going to the airport hours after completing the marathon.
The marathon elevation was between 6400 and 7200 feet, which definitely impacted our times (4:12:46). There was apparently a 2% grade the first 18 miles, but we hardly noticed it.
The course was gorgeous - rolling hills and mountains surrounded us and a gorgeous altitude sunrise started the run. Nearly all of the running was on trails and paved bike paths and the organizers did an excellent job supporting the course. Aid stations were appropriately placed and every station after mile 10 had some nourishment in addition to the drinks.
After the race we had the ‘Chubby’ (pictured below) at the Copper Creek Pub & Grub. The Chubby is a 1/2 pound burger between two grilled cheese sandwiches and 100% pure genius.
The Newpark hotel was literally 50 yds from the start and finish line.
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I ran the Las Vegas marathon on Sunday with Jeff and 207 other people dressed as Elvis.
We apparently broke the record for number of runners dressed as Elvis (this is tracked?). The marathon organizers recruited people to dress as Elvis and provided a number of Elvis-specific events including a separate starting carrel, pasta dinner and get together the day before.
All of the Elvii stopped at Mile 5 for a while to witness couples getting married at a run-through wedding chapel. This 20-30 min stop made chip times meaningless, but from Mile 6 on we ran a 3:43 pace.
The costume was so cheaply constructed that it was pretty easy to run in although I made a few safety pin modifications to keep my pants up, I barely noticed the costume was there (other than the glasses that wouldn’t stay up).
The race was well supported and organized this year (although the bag drop apparently sucked). According to reports, the marathon was poorly run in prior years.
However, this race confirmed my opinion that Marathons at vacation destinations are weak. Runners were secondary (or worse) at both the Las Vegas and Disney World marathons. The entire goals of the organizers seem to be to get the runners out of the way of the tourists as soon as possible. This means 6 am starts and shitty finishes.
While the Vegas marathon started out on the strip, it finished with two miles along a service road behind the casinos (construction areas and parking lots).
Compare this to Boston, London and other major marathons where you finish in the center of the city, running down the most scenic roads in the city.
