RNR Las Vegas Marathon Race Recap

Yesterday I ran my last marathon of the year, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon that started at 3pm on the Las Vegas Strip.

And I dressed as Elvis:

Although no one really thought I was Elvis.  homemade costume fail.

We headed down to the start at the MGM Grand around 2pm and had a little time to kill.  Before jumping in my corral I met the very sweet Mendy who was running the half at 4:30pm:

And Kelly who was going to run but is injured, heal quickly, girl!

And Dorothy who’s originally from Ireland and has the most adorable accent.  She was running her fifth marathon yesterday:

I hopped into my corral and was ready to run a fun marathon.  A couple people had asked what I planned on running and I said a 3:30.  I figured with a nice flat, fast course that would be really doable and not too hard.  oh lordy, was I wrong.

The race started right on time and the weather was great: sunny and 70 degrees but cooling down.  Oh yeah, there was wind.  lots of wind.  wind advisories:

Running in “gusts up to 45 MPH” won’t be that bad, right?

For most of the first 8 miles we headed up the Strip with the wind at our backs – these miles were SO EASY AND FUN.  There were tons of people out cheering, you’re running by all the hotels and bright lights and a nice gust pushing you.

I wanted to start conservatively because I figured that at some point I’d be facing the wind so I was running 7:30-7:45 min/miles and felt like I was jogging.

RNR changed the course this year and it was a lot better and more interesting.  In fact, they made quite a few changes and the whole experience was a thousand million times better than last year.

I didn’t have any problems with the corrals or getting out of the finish area or anything this year so cheers to RNR for fixing the problems.

I didn’t want to have digestion issues like last year so I think I went a little light on the food because I was hungry almost immediately after we started.

I’ll do another post on what I ate pre-race, but they were handing out gels at mile 7.5 and I ate it right away.  I also brought a bag of Swedish Fish (300 calories worth) and grabbed another gel later in the race.

Around mile 8 we turned and ran through Freemont and hit some wind, but it wasn’t that bad yet.

At mile 9 we headed away from the Strip into a residential/commercial area. I ran the first 10 miles in 1:18, but then we hit more wind and mile 11 was my first over 8 min/mile.

I passed the halfway mark at 1:43 and just focused on getting through the windy miles and cruising through the miles where the wind was at my back.

Miles 13.5-16 were one long stretch into the wind and my mile pace went from 7:45 to 8:30.  All I could do is put my head down and repeatedly tell myself, Move forward, not side to side.

Before I had run a few windy races (Gansett Marathon both years, Ragnar Vegas), I didn’t really understand how it could be so hard… just suck it and run harder, right?

But man, that strong headwind is tough.  You have to push that much harder to sustain the same pace and that wears on you… especially when you look at your watch and the time doesn’t reflect your effort.

We turned around at 16 and had 2 fast miles with a tailwind before hitting the last seven miles facing the wind.

I passed mile 19 at 2:31 and thought, I have 59 minutes to run 7 miles and I don’t know if I can do it.

I pushed hard those last 7 miles and barely could maintain 8 minute miles.  It didn’t matter which street or way we turned, it was all in the wind for that last hour.  And man, it was tough.

Those were some of the slowest last miles that I’ve ran in a long time, but I gave it all I had and finished in 3:28:36, 23rd woman and 179th overall with an average pace of 7:58.

Like I said, the race itself was so much better this year and I had a lot of fun.  It was a lot harder than I expected and it took a lot more out of me, but it’s all good.

Thanks again to Pro Compression for hooking me up with white Elvis socks, although I guess I looked like the white gaudy Liberace fairy godmother.

{Use the code FIT40 to get any Pro sock for 40% off and free shipping now}

Did anyone else run Vegas, CIM or another race this weekend?

Tagged as: race recap, vegas baby