This year I was granted an amazing opportunity to join Rock and Roll Marathon’s Rock n’ Squad, which took me to VA Beach, Savannah, and now Vegas. Every event I’ve been to of theirs in the past was designed to ensure anyone from the first time runner to the pro athlete could have an amazing race. With that said… I dun goofed.
Here’s the scenario: Augusta was about 1.5 months ago, I didn’t have decent runs on the two 20 milers I put in, the race started at about 8pm my time (5pm-ish in Vegas), and I didn’t train enough in the dark. All of this mixed into one nasty mental bonk. It wasn’t actually until about mile 23 that I was physically locked up, if you ignore my intestinal pain, so I’m dishing all of this out to not being in the right head space. That said, I still finished in 4:11. I’d have loved to of kept it under four hours or PRed, but I also knew that was unlikely from the start. Instead, I’m using this as a learning opportunity and a training run for the January 50k, which I’m still not 100% in for.
Vegas Weekend – 5k and Kesha
Vegas isn’t really my bag, with the massive amounts of booze and gambling, but RnR had a lot in store for us. On the first day we did some tourist stuff before resting for the 5k, very poorly planned out arrival to said 5k, but had a great time. I was planning on doing a slow job, but they closed the corrals early so it stuck me all the way in the back. If you’re planning to do the 5k and are in a low corral number, get there early.
So, do to my mix up, I figured this was a great opportunity to tail Grace and try to be supportive of her first 5k (she prefers lifting stuff). I staid behind her most of the time as to not pressure her, but did jump in front a few times to try and clear a path. She absolutely crushed the race. She knocked it way below her goal. I was a bit worried that the concert would start before the back corrals finished… so this actually worked out perfectly.
This crazy girl still put on a happy face after pushing her self, we did a quick stretch, and Kesha did her thing. It was an awesome concert and the right amount of hype for the weekend. I mean.. I would have loved if she played the song she did with Eagles of Death Metal but whatev…
We got in pretty late after the concert, and because my body refuses to sleep once the sun hits me, I likely only got around six hours of sleep.
Vegas Marathon
Early to rise and off to breakfast. Basically at this point I was getting a steady stream of fluids in, some avocado toast with eggs, and was hoping that nothing would piss my stomach off. If the wind blows the wrong way it acts up, and mixing that in with a marathon is no bueno.
We split the day up with some top golf, relax a bit, and I geared up and walked to the start village. We picked a hotel real close to the start and finish, which made things pretty easy day of. Maybe an hour or two before leaving 230ish, I ate a couple handfuls of Cheerios and a banana. Then at start village, closer to 345, I ate most of another banana. This is honestly more nutrition than I’ve had in me before other races, so I didn’t know how it’d go (spoiler alert – poorly).
The start village had a pretty awesome cover band going, which helped distract me before toeing the start line. My plan of attack was to shove some music into my head at about mile four where I was going to meet up with Grace, and take in all the sights before that.
Mile 1 and 2 heads away from the strip and towards the airport/desert on a slight incline. I honestly couldn’t even tell because of how many people were in my corral, but once you hit the u-turn gravity gave me a nice boost. The sun was setting over some large dunes and damn was it a sight to take in.
Miles 3 and four had us running right into the heart of the strip. Grace called me over, and I bailed off my course for a drive-by hello, and went back to it. I tossed my earbuds in and set my pace. My Garmin was having some interference from the buildings so it was hard to nail my pace down, so I going about 10 seconds too fast. I eventually equaled our to about 8:45, which was still too fast, and was just trying to stay in front of the 3:50 pacer.
Miles 5 through 15 were still on pace, which makes sense as I love my 15 mile long runs. Those always feel right and just the right amount of tired after. But towards those later miles my intensities were getting standby, I was getting sleepy (it was past my bedtime), and some areas were pretty dark so I had to watch my feet. This is where the mental drag really started to pull at me.
At mile 16 I must have hit the overpass because that incline was a bit rough for this flat Charleston runner. I… walked it. Yup. Another mental blow. Got to the top and let gravity work me down to mile 17. At this point, we were far away from the strip or really much of anything. I have no issues with seclusion, but the darkness was starting to drag on me hard. Somewhere around mile 18 I was starting to flop and tried to keep any walking to the aid stations.
Around mile 21 I hit a pace of 10:19 and everything was going down hill. Stomach was in and out, my legs were cramping even with base salt, and I just wasn’t feeling things. Around mile two I deployed the run-walk strategy, which was working, but I crashed at mile 25 with total leg lock. Which was right when the 4:10 pacer and I started to frog hop, who seemed to have bonked too. Oops.
Finally mile 26 presented itself, and I hobbled my ass as fast as I could to the finish. I felt pretty defeated. My legs were not nearly as soar as the last marathons (could hardly walk) but my ankle is a bit toast.
We cleaned up. Got some tequila and In-and-out, and hit the High Roller Farris wheel thing.
So here are my numbers. Looking back at them, and regardless of how defeated I felt, these are not bad. Still not my slowest marathon, but.. we are just going to call this my night time marathon finish time, which I’ll never do again, so uhh PR? Sure yes totally that.
Jokes aside, the later miles can be pretty draining away from the strip, but that’s common of marathons.
The Numbers
Finish Time: 4:11:08 | Pace of 9:35
Rankings: 578/2827 overall, 91/298 age group, 476/1888 gender – Slightly better than mid-pack even though I felt the finish time was still disappointing.