Thoughts on the Las Vegas Marathon

   So, I have not been blogging for a few days as I have been out of town on vacation which has included running a marathon. I finished in just under 5 hours and 5 minutes, but that is besides the point of this post. What I want to address is the sights along the way.

   In about the first mile (and certainly within the first two), there were three people promoting Christianity. There signs said quite a bit, so I wasn't able to read them in their entirety, but I'm quite sure there was some message about repenting for sins and how Jesus loves us. It seemed to be quite an odd place to be sending such a message, as it contradicts other messages Christians occasionally send. Just the day before, I was watching this show called The Real Winning Edge, a Christian show about teenagers and their accomplishments. On the episode I watched, there was a kid who was into surfing who claimed his friends started getting involved with girls and drinking, and giving into those temptations was bringing down their surfing abilities. (My thought was that maybe it had more to do with his friends not practicing as much because they changed their priorities, regardless of what those priorities were. In other words, if they would have done something that would not be considered sinful in this youth's mind, like volunteering for charities or maybe studying more, their surfing abilities would have gone down doing those things as well. But I digress!) So, if living a supposedly sinful life is going to bring down one's athletic abilities, these marathon runners cannot be living that bad of lives. Even if these people don't share the belief of the surfer kid, they were still trying to tell marathon runners, people who are trying to achieve something that is often considered a great accomplishment, that they are horrible people in need of saving. In short, it seems to me that they were trying to deliver their message to the wrong crowd.

   The other thing was that somewhere along the strip was a billboard that said "WHERE IS THE REAL BIRTH CIRTIFICATE?" I really have nothing to say about that than it is just pathetic how people cling to their absurd ideas.