Rock and roll half marathon in Las Vegas

Who travels to Las Vegas to run? Apparently I do and my very good friend Slavka who is responsible for this fun idea.

It all started with my friend calling me one day because she had really hard time going thru this separation/ divorce process. I’m divorced myself so I always have a great amount of empathy for people facing such a big life change. So she calls me one day and goes: “ I really want to run the Rock and Roll half marathon in Las Vegas. Are you in?” Heck yeah came out of my mouth even without checking my calendar but since it’s my birthday on the 21st I knew this would be epic. 

Training for a race in the winter can be tricky due to the  rain which can hinder any training efforts. This year has not been any exception so I had to skip few runs but tried to make it up by doing the stairs at work for 30 min every single shift. 

As the excitement was building up few days before the departure I got a phone call from my friend saying she caught a little cold unfortunately. I never ran a race with a cold so when she said she is definitely doing the run I was impressed. Next day, the day of departure, I woke up with a cold too! Apparently viruses get transmitted over the phone too 🙂

After we arrived in Vegas uneventfully we went straight from the airport to the Expo to pick up our bibs and check out all the cool running gear and gadgets. Of course I had to buy a coffee cup commemorating this race and a hat 🙂 And would buy more if my luggage wasn’t full already.

As the time went on we felt more sick and more tired and had a night out scheduled and the race for the next day…. In other words we wanted to lay in bed but we also wanted to go dancing. What a dilemma..so of course we did both 🙂

I’m going to skip the part about dancing as this is a running blog, but we had fun! 

The next day, the day of our race, we decide to sleep in and rest as much as possible to recover and get ready. Luckily the race didn’t start till 4:30pm which was such a smart and considerate planning from the organizers because the party people need to get their beauty sleep too.

It was a beautiful February day in Las Vegas with the sun shining and temperatures in 70’ during a day but our race started in late afternoon and the temperatures cooled a little bit which is exactly what we needed. 

The start line seemed little chaotic with people trying to find their coral while not missing their start time. And finally the time came, around 16:30 a singer came to a little podium to sing the national anthem, which is always such a nice start to a race and after that it was a show time. We both still felt sick but promised each other not to think or talk about it. We also agreed that we are not going to run together as we have a different pace.

Ok Vegas let’s see what you got. I started with a conservative pace as I wanted to be able to conserve my energy and finish this race. Didn’t have any ambition to set any records 🙂 

Running the strip is definitely a much different experience than driving or walking. All the hotels seemed all of sudden taller and also wider. Passing ALL of them in person made me feel so small and also very slow. I loved watching all the spectators who would cheer us on, drunk or sober:) The energy was absolutely amazing, doing high fives along the course never gets old. We started by New York New York, and continued toward Excalibur passed Luxor, Mandalay Bay and shortly after that we turned back and continued on the other side of Las Vegas blvd, passed the airport and had a chance to take a selfie with the “welcome to fabulous las vegas” sign and continued to towards MGM grand, Paris, Flamingo, Harrah’s, Venetian (that is a one long hotel!), Wynn, Encore and headed now toward the old part of Vegas that I never visited before.

What a huge contrast when you compare those two worlds! I was happy to turn around and head back as I started feeling tired. Luckily the race had plenty of distraction along the course and when I felt like I’m loosing momentum there would be a band performing or a DJ playing and that would get my energy going again. As I was running pass Stratosphere, Circus Circus, the Fashion Show Mall, Treasure Island, Mirage I tried to just walk for short amount of time to rest but as soon as I did that my legs and my hips started to hurt so ironically  I had to keep running to avoid the pain. When I reached Ceasar’s Palace I could hear the host/announcer that was yelling out runners names as they were getting thru the finish line. Finally! I don’t know if I was mentally focusing on the 13.1 miles or if my body just really reached the max but I was certainly exhausted. I had tears in my eyes when I crossed the finish line. It was over! The best feeling ever, the runner’s high kicked in quickly and just like with all other races I forgot the pain almost immediately. Let’s talk about the finish line…of course they had the best party with a champagne and DJ and dancing right in front of the Bellagio’s fountain. We will be back 🙂