Training means that you run, regardless of where you're at. One thing that I've heard consistently from all of my friends that have trained for marathons is "never, ever skip your long runs. No matter what."

So while in Las Vegas on business, I had a 9 mile run scheduled for Saturday. (Thankfully, this is a "recovery" run, so it's actually short as far as "long" runs go.)

I ran up and down the Vegas Strip. I started just as the sun was rising at around 6am, to avoid the extreme heat (it's supposed to be 107 today). The drunks were walking back to their hotels, which made for an entertaining spectacle of humanity.

Highlights included:

+ Two drunk dudes singing the Rocky theme as I passed them (!!)

+ Super hot girl with drunken slit eyes pointing at me and winking, from the back of her cab

+ Dude barfing into a garbage can, while his buddies consoled him

+ Hooker postcards on the sidewalk getting skankier and skankier, as I headed further away from the "nicer" properties

+ The massive sidewalk sweeping machines that pick up the skanky hooker postcards that have filled the sidewalks through the night

+ Passed out cabbie driven up onto sidewalk, getting pulled out onto a stretcher, while police take crime photos (at least I hope he was passed out.)

+ Dude swimming in his pants, in a fountain at Miracle Mile shops, and then grinding his wet butt on his two girlfriends

+ Two stair climbs that I couldn't avoid on the pedestrian overpasses nearly KILLED me

+ The "Brooklyn Bridge" at New York, NY was closed to pedestrians. Sooo wanted to run over this

+ It's so dry, you don't sweat. (Totally amazing!)

+ As the sun fully rose, runners slowly replaced the drunks on the sidewalk

I ended the run with the sun up, and OK Go "This too shall pass" playing on my ipod, with the totally appropriate lyrics "As the morning comes..." There could not have been a more appropriate song at that moment...

I must do this again. Totally awesome.

As always, feel free to make a donation to the American Heart Association to help cover my donation/entry fee into the marathon! I can't do this without you.

Having the Humongo Nation tour smack dab in the middle of a marathon training schedule was a challenge. Two reasons:

1. Diet.

The cool thing about being on tour is that once you approach a new city, everyone starts tweeting things like "you MUST go to Kane's Doughnuts." and "You have to make a stop at Sublime Doughnuts." One of the things that you learn on tour is that there are must visit doughnut places, bbq places, mexican, burrito, seafood and chicken sandwich places. There's a ton of "once in a lifetime" food opportunities across our land.

Sampling local food awesomery is a part of tour life. So much so, that we even created a blog for it. By the end of the second week, I was full. Truthfully, I was full after the first day - but there were places that we had to eat at.

2. Running.

Didn't exactly have a lot of time for this. We were working from 7am till as late as you can stay up on most days, which doesn't leave time for much running. And on Friday night, we deserved adult beverages, which doesn't leave me in the best condition for running on Saturday mornings. I don't drink much, so when I do....well, it doesn't work your body like Gatorade does.

My normal schedule has me running four days/week, with at least one long run, usually on a Saturday. I was lucky to get four runs in total during tour. Each under 6 miles.

The cool thing was that I've planned for this. I've even built two recovery weeks into my schedule, which is good. I'm back on a regular schedule again, but I'm nowhere near the runner that I was two weeks ago. Looking forward to getting back to where I was.

Oh, and if you're ever in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachussets, New York, Washington DC, North Carolina, Georgia or Florida - I've got a place that you just must eat at.

As always, feel free to make a donation to the American Heart Association as payment for my bad eating habits, or for my entry into the marathon. Can't do this without you.