Rock 'n' Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

I've never done a stand alone half marathon...I wasn't nervous about this race distance, but I was planning on pushing myself harder than I ever had before on a run this long so pain was inevitable. I don't fancy myself a runner, so I kept a modest goal of a sub 1:50. Las Vegas is weird for me...For some reason it fills me with anxiety; The energy is too high, the lights too bright and the crowds too big. Not sure what I was thinking deciding to do a race there, but the thought of running down the strip at night was just too tempting to pass up. That, and I always meet my friend and his wife in Vegas this time of year anyways, so the timing was perfect. My starting heart rate was high...maybe 100-110 BPM resting. This could have been due to the crowd of 22,000 people, the "Vegas Experience", pre-race jitters or all of the above. Needless to say, with all this pent up energy, I was ready for the race to start.

The first mile or so, I got into my rhythm...The wind was especially heavy. In fact, the whole city was under a wind advisory all day long. Depending on where you were at on the course, it was either blowing directly at you, pushing you along or hitting you sideways blowing the feet out from under your legs. At the start, however, we were running right towards it. I did my best to "draft" behind bigger people who were going my pace to cut down on the headwind, but even then I working hard for a pretty slow pace. But after the first turn around, about a half mile in, the wind was at our backs and I was flying. At one point I looked down at my watch and I was going 5:49/mile with less effort than I was before going 10:00/miles.

The run into the city was awesome...1000's of silhouettes with a front row view of the Las Vegas strip as a back drop. It was insane and had I not been going for a specific time I would have stopped to take a picture or two. I ran this race as I had planned; hard, but sustainable effort and keeping a sub 8:24 pace when I could. My increased heart rate didn't help...However, I did calm down as the race went on. I'd say it was right around 170-180 at the beginning of the race, but then "calmed down" to 160-170 as the race went on. Not too far off from what it would be in a normal environment pushing that pace...Average heart rate was 172 which was actually a lower number than what I was expecting to see.

I felt strong the whole time...lungs were a little tight, but the legs held up beautifully. (They'd better after the training that I've been through this year.) Without the wind at my face, I was cruising so I was a little surprised to see that I only beat my goal by just over a minute. I guess a lot of that can be contributed to the wind coming directly at me during the last 2-3 miles. Fun run...cool experience, and a decent (for me) time.

Nothing...take a shot of Jagermeister to calm the nerves.

Waited for my fiancee to finish (She was the cookie monster for any other runners out there who may have saw her.) And then found our friends. Walked 2 miles to the Hooters and got down on some wings, had a few cocktails and won about $100.00 at a Blackjack table...


I guess I was monitoring my heart rate a little too much...after dealing with SVT a long time ago, I may be a little overly sensitive to it getting too fast. But even without that, I probably couldn't have taken off more than a minute or so from my time...I was very happy.


Not many people can say they've ran down the strip at night...well, at least not sober without any traffic in the way. Race was really fun and a cool experience. It was hard for me to get into a comfortable race mode in Vegas, but I dug the experience. I may not do it again, but I'm glad I was able to enjoy the experience.