Las Vegas Marathon

On December 7th, Jared ran in the Las Vegas Marathon which is 26.2 miles and the half is 13.1 miles. Jared ran the half and did awesome!! He decided only 4 weeks before that he was going to do it and most people train for months before running it. The furthest he had ran prior to the marathon was 7 miles. Jared was thinking that best-case scenario, he would finish in 2 1/2 hours, worst-case scenario would be that he would get pushed to the sidewalk because they open the strip back up after a certain amount of time.

Jared, Brody and I stayed at the Excalibur on the strip the night before so that he would be right there in the morning and so that Brody and I could hopefully meet him at the finish. The marathon started at 6 am at Mandalay Bay, went all the way down the strip, downtown into the ghetto and all the way back! You get a chip that tracks your time because with 9,000 people running all at once, you don't get moving very quickly until further along. Jared said that it took him about 10 minutes to actually get to the start line after the time had begun!

Brody and I headed to Mandalay Bay around 8 am. We found a spot right at the finish line and kept an eye out for him. I was thinking that he was either going to finish with a really good time or finish at the very end! I knew he would finish no matter what, though. As Brody and I are watching people finish, I started to get worried. People were crossing the line with the most awful, painful expressions on their faces, like they had barely made it and were about to pass out! I was nervous only because Jared hadn't really trained for 13.1 miles of running!

All of a sudden, here comes Jared blazing across the finish line!!! We were in the perfect spot and I was able to yell his name and he saw us right away! It was seriously one of the coolest things I have ever seen and I was so proud of him!! Jared made his way through all the people and gave us big, sweaty hugs! The first words out of his mouth were, "That sucked! That was the stupidest thing I've ever done!" But then after about 10 minutes, he was already talking about the next marathon that he wanted to run! Jared's official marathon time was 2 hours and 33 minutes!! He did so awesome!! He ran the first 8 miles without stopping or walking once and then just kept pushing himself to finish! I knew that he would finish, but I didn't know that he would do it in such a good time! Jared ran his very first marathon within his best-case scenario time!

Waiting for the marathon to start

Fireworks before the marathon

The start/finish line

I think he found every camera along the course

Look at him go!

Yay Jared!!!!