Morning
After last night we were in need of some serious grub. We rolled in Goldilocks and ordered food for 8 people. Eventho all the good food was on the breakfast menu.

Place Your Bets…
We headed over to Mandalady to drop our bets and meet up with Chris’ cuzin who does some work for Pacquiao.

I dropped a hundo on a few rounds and we went off to Luxor to meet up with cuzin. Tor and I split from the group to grab some Starbucks cuz we were suffering from massive food coma.

We bounce after a while to get in a power nap or two before our XS Bottle Night.

Suit Up!
After re-energizing we suited up and were ready to head out by 9:45pm. I downed 3-4 shots of Henny before leaving the room, which turns out to be a bad idea later on in the night.

We walked over to XS and met up with our “hook-up”. We walked in and OMG the club was amazing, and our table was right near the entrance – so we had “first dibs” on whoever rolled into the club.

It was a good good night! All the homies had fun and they actually got numbers from the night. We’re prolly meeting up with a few of them tomorrow night after the fight. [UPDATE: We didn't...hahaha]

GrandLux
We ended the night off with dinner at the GrandLux where we see Mario and Rob Castro from Seattle. Homies are watching the CCTV over at MGM where all the action’s gonna be.

Trowed Up and Passed out…

Arrival
We landed in Vegas after a super tubulent flight. My goal of sleeping the whole flight was almost accomplished, but failed because the stewardess decided to announce we’re in Vegas 45 min before we acutally landed.

Grub / Errands
Our first stop was Pinoy/Pinay for some much needed grub. One of the servers set us all up with Manny’s Favorite dish.

After engulfing an entire pig we set out to finish up some errands. Wanye surprised BOFA by withdrawing hella money , we did our ritual of stocking up on hangover supplies and licks at Walmart, then rolled over to Niketown to grab our Manny gear.

Chillax
We head back to the Venetian to unload and unpack. Then we got into chill mode until it was time to bounce for the night.

Night-time Festivities

We get our dress on and started the pre-funk. I got T-Wanye to down an entire bottle of Hennesey with me then we bounce over to V-Bar for our second pre-funk!

After downing another shot of VSOP we left V-Bar and head over to Blush.

Blush was tite; no cover, no line, hella packed, and had good music.

At around 2:30/3:00 we head off to The GrandLux for some much needed grub.

Passed Out.

Yes my friends, today is a good good day for two reasons:

1. Finally a new post on the blog [I just noticed that it's been exactly 2 months since my last post]
2. B-Side is going to be Vegas bound in approx. 17 hrs

We’ll be staying at a suite in the Beautiful Venetian Casino for the Pacquio vs. Cotto fight this weekend. Prepare for some drunken blog posts about In ‘n’ Out and Pinoy/Pinay runs.

It’ll also be my first real bottle service style outing at XS @ Encore. The homies and I are attempting to do it Hangover style and go all out this weekend.

Let’s just hope I don’t wake up with a missing tooth, or lying next to a freakin’ tiger.

Stay tuned….

Day 2 in Chi-town started off rather early for us west-siders. My cousins and I hit up The SprinkBrook Golf Course in Naperville. Tee time was 7:18am CST (5:18am for me) for the back 9.

Had some delicious homemade burnt bacon and sausage and off to the course we went.

Course was a beaut. The public course felt like a members only couse considering how well the greens were looking. Marc spent the entire time poaching the lost balls in the out of bounds areas and threw them our way.

I had a few good hits despite my lack of sleep. Was really surprised they had a real green driving range – none of the artificial stuff.

Next stop:
- Pick up our timing chips at Navy Pier
- Head over to the Cubs game

Day 1 of the Chi-town trip has come and gone. After a sleepless night of packing my ass ended up a zombie the entire day.

Agenda went like this:
- Pack
- Fly
- Dinner with the relatives
- Drank with the relatives
- Chismis (gossip) with the relatives

More details to come…

The last time I hit up In-n-Out was in Vegas this past April and my homeboy’s ordered their burgers “Animal Style”. I was amazed, their ish was glistening with grease, and filled with grilled onions. For those of you that haven’t hit up an In-n-Out yet, “Animal Style” isn’t even on the menu…it’s on the Secret Menu.

Little did I know, there’s more than just ordering “Animal Style”. Here’s a few other secret menu items…the full list after the jump.

“Double Meat” = like a Double Double without cheese.

“3 by Meat” = three meat patties and no cheese.

“Animal Style” = the meat is cooked and fried with mustard and then pickles are added, extra spread and grilled onions are added.

“Animal Style Fries” = fries with cheese, spread, grilled onions and pickles (if you ask for them).

“Protein Style” = for all you low-carbohydrate dieters, this is a burger with no bun (wrapped in lettuce).

“Flying Dutchman” = two meat patties, two slices of melted cheese and nothing else – not even a bun!

Fries “Well-Done” = extra crispy fries . . . even better than the regular!

[Hidden In-N-Out Menu]

Week 1 is complete and I’m already seeing an improvement of my max consecutive reps. My first max count was 18 consecutive pushups, one week after the start of the program and I’m at 28 max consecutive reps.

Week 2 doesn’t look too challenging; but the required max reps for the final set moves slightly closer to my actual max.

I’m doing this workout in addition to my marathon training and regular gym workouts.

Next update in a week…

Here’s a list of all the upcoming races I’m putting my aging body through. The biggest one is in Chicago for a Half Marathon (the jury’s still out on this one – I’ll know a week before the race if I’m doing the Half or settling for the 5K).

I’m currently looking for both a 10K and/or 10 mile race in August for another reality check before the 1/2 marathon in September. If anyone has any suggestions in the Seattle area lemme know.

*big-ups to G’man for the race dates suggestion for this blog

So in my never-ending quest to start and quickly stop new workout programs (i.e. P90x) I’ve recently come across a new and simple workout that states if you follow the program you’ll be able to do 100 consecutive pushups. Nice. I started my first workout today, a program that lasts 6 weeks 3x a week, and it wasn’t so bad.

I didn’t think I’d be able to do 10 and I ended up doing 18 for my max. Not bad given I haven’t worked out in a while; mostly concentrating on my upcoming marathon.

So if I follow this plan accordingly I should be able to do 100 consecutive pushes on August 15th. I’ll update at the halfway point to keep me in check.

This past Monday (July 13th) marks exactly 2 months before my scheduled half-marathon in the 13th Annual Chicago Half-Marathon/5k near beautiful Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. I’m still deciding on whether or not by body will survive a half marathon. I don’t want to do it all alone so I’ve been slowly recruiting my family and relatives to get onboard with me. I just got confirmation that my cousin, Marc, is going to be doing the 5K, and my sister and her hubby are wavering on making the trip to our hometown. My brother and his girl just changed their flight to Chicago from next week to the week of the run so I’m sure they’re going to be running with us as well.

5K or Half
Ambition-wise I want to do the half, realistically though I don’t think my body is physically ready to actually finish the half. My deciding factor will be if I can finish a 10 mile run in 2 hrs and 15 mins a week before the race. If I make the time, I’ll be in the chute for the half in Chicago – otherwise I’ll be chillin’ with my siblings/relatives in the 5K chute.

Our mutual friend, Mark, may be running in the half if he doesn’t beat his PR on July 26th. Let’s hope he ties it so he’ll be making the trip over to Chi-Town again for the run.

Training
Right now training consists of running as much as I can in a week. We just did a 2 mile run today and it took 25 minutes. I’m so screwed, but I can’t feel all bad – that was 2 minutes faster than my last run. I’ve been running around the neighborhood for the past few weeks and has a few hills to go through. Chicago = no hills. I really need to make it over to Greenlake because the path doesn’t have any hills.

For now I’ve been logging all my runs through the iPhone with my Nike+ sensor. The data has been for the most part semi-accurate. I’ve been using mapmyrun.com to measure the distances of my runs and Nike+ has been off about 2-3%.

Hopefully I can get 10-15 miles in this week; I’ll update my progress over the weekend.