“Actually, I hate running,” Norwalt said “Growing up, I never was on a track team or a cross-country team or anything else. I played football and wrestled. I just didn’t enjoy running. But I thought that this could be a difficult challenge that you could complete with the work put in. It didn’t require tremendous talent. It just required tremendous heart.”

Norwalt received a finisher medal for completing the Rock ‘n’ Roll-Las Vegas marathon on Nov. 17. Medals went to runners who finished in less than five hours, and Norwalt left about 20 minutes to spare.

“The biggest thing is to be a positive role model to my kids – that they can believe that it doesn’t matter how hard it is. You can accomplish anything as long as you work hard enough,” he said.

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon-Las Vegas is part of a series of Rock ‘n’ Roll marathons that attract 30,000 to 40,000 runners annually. There are 5-kilometer, 10-kilometer, half-marathon and full marathon races.

Submitted Photo An overview of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in Las Vegas Nov. 17 shows the crowded field at the start of the race.

Norwalt and a friend, Tyler Cordell, ran the full marathon of 26.2 miles. Cordell had previously run a marathon, but it was Norwalt’s first. The two also trained together.

“It was definitely tough,” Norwalt said of finding time to train. A master sergeant in the Air Force, he works long hours and also is a full-time, online student studying logistics management, and he and his wife, Nina, have two sons, Cash, 6, and Leo, 1.

It wasn’t possible to get in any long runs except on weekends.

“I don’t think we ever, ever got past about eight miles,” he said. “I tried to limit to an hour because I didn’t really have much more time. So, in the marathon, after I passed the eight miles, that was as long as I ever ran. I’d say at the two and a half hour time, I was like ‘holy cow.’

“I think the message in my head that I kept on repeating about hundred times during the race was I should have trained more,” he said only half jokingly. “The more miles you put in the better, and it was just incredibly difficult to get in those miles, so my attitude wasn’t to make excuses. It was to perform at the level that I knew I could. And if I wasn’t going to make it on skill, I was going to make it on heart.”

Tommy Puzey of Flagstaff, Ariz., repeated as the Las Vegas men’s winner with a time of two hours, 28 minutes and 4 seconds. Puzey trains year-round and runs about 10 marathons a year.

Norwalt and Cordell ran together, keeping each other motivated.

After crossing the finish line with a medal, Norwalt never stopped running. He was training for a 5K race this month and plans to continue training year-round. His goal is to enter two or three marathons next year. He also wants to enter some 5K races, and given his competitive nature, he’ll be in them to win them.

He also is looking ahead to next summer and the opportunity to compete for a win at the next State Fair Parade 5K event, which he has run previously.

Norwalt was born at Minot Air Force Base, graduating from Minot High School in 2007. He has served in the Air Force for the past 12 years. He was stationed at Minot AFB from 2013 until moving to the Las Vegas area in June 2018.

He credits his military experience for helping prepare him for a race he wasn’t as ready for as he would have wished. The commitment to complete task after task and accomplish the mission with limited time and resources translated well from the military to the marathon.

“I just always like challenges. I saw this is an awesome challenge,” he said. “Every race you enter, you have the ultimate goal of winning it, even the marathon. I knew there’s incredibly experienced people, but you went with the idea that I’m going to try to perform as well as I possibly can.”

That desire to perform well is what has him thinking he might come to enjoy running. If he ever gets into that winner’s circle, he said, “I will be hooked.”