Running the 2007 Las Vegas half-Marathon

Back at the end of April, I wrote about being Blissfully Ignorant about the run I was supposed to do the following morning. It was to be my wife’s and my first training run with the Las Vegas RoadRunners. As I remember it, that first run was a whopping 20 minute run. It wouldn’t be very long before we were routinely running 6, 7 or 8 miles on a given Sunday.

Fast forward 6 months.

Bright and early yesterday morning, we left the house and drove over to Mandalay Bay. Thanks to me not listening to my wife, we ended up parking way too far away and ended up walking 15 minutes to the convention center. After a brief stay inside the nice and warm conference room provided to the members of the RoadRunners, we headed outside to take our place behind the elite runners and the running Elvi (of which there were more than 150) on the start line for the Las Vegas Marathon. The sun wasn’t up yet, it was quite cold and there were some 15,000 runners behind us waiting to start running.

On our way out to the starting line I was contemplating the nerves I had about running in my first half-marathon. I then thought about the small group of elite runners who probably had a hard time sleeping last night with anticipation for today’s race. While my race was against myself and nobody else, these elite runners are trying to finish first out of 15,000. That has to be a bit nerve-wracking.

Unfortunately, I injured myself about 6 weeks ago. My training was basically put on hold and in the weeks leading up to Marathon day, I had run remarkably little. I knew this was going to be problematic, but I was determined to go out and finish this race. Even if that meant walking the entire course. As it turns out, that’s pretty much exactly what it meant. My average pace time and my overall finish were nothing to brag about. Though, I’m still quite proud to have completed my first half-marathon.

A guy from my office recently completed a triathlon and went on to run the full marathon today. When I was talking to him about the injury he told me to remember that, even though this is the race that I have been training for, that doesn’t mean it’s the only race available. Compounding the injury by over-exerting myself for this ONE race makes no sense. There will be plenty of other races to be run. I took that to heart and really tried to maintain a comfortable pace that would allow me to finish without causing too much pain. The thing is, 13.1 miles, no matter how quickly or slowly you walk it, it’s going to cause some pain.

After the race we ate a bunch of the goodies that they were handing out at the finish line. We then went home and ate some more. Took a nice warm bath, took a short nap, iced my leg, napped some more and then got up and ate again. And, as if that wasn’t enough activity for 1 day, we headed back to Mandalay Bay last night for the Social Distortion concert at the House of Blues. General Admission tickets means you stand up the entire show. After the beating we put our legs through earlier in the day, this made for a very uncomfortable time. We stuck it out as long as we could, but eventually had to head home early.

I had an amazing time yesterday. I know for sure I’ll be back again next year. Hopefully by then I will have run a few more half-marathons. Next year I would like to finish in less than 2 hours and 30 minutes. We’ll see how that goes.

Here are a few photos I took:

Running uphill is difficult stuff!

This past weekend Chris and I took part in a little race called the Notch Run. Imagine, if you will, driving to the top of Mount Charleston (a little higher than 8000 feet elevation), parking your car and being bussed 4 miles back down the mountain. Now, get out of the bus (willingly) and now you have to get back to your car… on foot.

The mountain and scenery was absolutely beautiful. I took a couple photos (1, 2, 3, 4), but my camera battery was zapped so after only 4 shots, it had had enough. The weather was great, too. When we got there bright and early, it was right around 50 degrees. A little chilly for just standing around, but once we started the run, with the sun at our back, the weather proved to be perfect.

As for the race itself, it was quite difficult. The entire race was uphill with varying degrees of incline ranging from just a little uphill to a metric shit ton of incline. And of course, the largest amount of incline was nestled between the mile 3 and mile 4 markers making for a fantastically slow finish on my part.

I am happy to report that I finished the race a full 4 minutes faster than I projected. I had assumed it would take me 1 hour to make it up the hill. 55:59:98 was the official time I crossed the line. I was quite pleased with that considering it wasn’t just an every day 4 mile run, there was also 1200 feet of vertical climb thrown in for fun.

After we got home from the run, I had a poker tournament to go play in. I lasted about 2 hours before I foolishly gave all my chips away. By the time I was done with poker, my energy was completely gone. I came home and dozed on the couch the rest of the afternoon/evening before it was finally time to give up the fight and go upstairs and hit the sack properly.

On Sunday morning I got up at 4:45 am and headed out to our weekly meeting with the Las Vegas RoadRunners for a nice 5 mile run. I was a little sore from the previous day’s race, but once I got going, I felt pretty good and ended up running pretty strong. I averaged the exact same pace throughout the 5 mile run as I had the previous week when we only ran 4 miles and not having run the day before. This was certainly a good sign.

Once again it was proven to me that running with a partner is way better than running alone. On Sunday Justin and I kicked some ass on the road. However, on Monday, with nobody at my side to keep me going, I gave in to the power of my normal lazyness (and the oppressive humidity) and cut my morning run short, considerably. This morning I was able to keep myself motivated and ran my full 30 minutes at a satisfying pace. I can definitely feel the progress.

Yes, I can even geek up running

My wife asks me, “Do you have to geek up everything?” The answer to that should be obvious to her by now, you’d think…

Our marathon training is moving along nicely. This past weekend we ran 60 minutes. Upon returning to the start I was checking out my pedometer and it showed that I had ran just over 4 miles. That didn’t seem right to me. I asked one of the organizers how far it was to the water station. He said it was about 2 miles. I had run WELL past the water station and back again. We estimated that my pedometer was off by roughly .7 miles. That means that all the stats I have been keeping on paper for the past few weeks were totally useless. Time to find new gear.
Enter the Garmin Forerunner 301. This is basically an onboard computer that tracks your heart rate, speed, distance and a ton of other stuff for you while you train. It comes with PC software that lets you import all your workouts and then it will display graphs of your workout including heart rate, speed, etc… It’s got a built in GPS system so it tracks your course as well. So, while you are checking out your speed and what not, you can see where you were at in your course you are. So, if there are hills and valleys, you can see what they do to your speed and heart rate.

It has about 100 other features that I haven’t even got to yet. Alerts, saved courses, preset workouts and a bunch of others that I haven’t yet checked out. All in due time.

Oh, if you are interested in purchasing one, I did my homework before I bought mine. Dicks Sporting Goods - $219, Sports Authority - $219, Best Buy - didn’t carry this model, Target - $179, Amazon.com - $164.

And, if anybody is in need of a slightly used watch with timer and built in heart rate monitor, let me know. Since buying the Garmin, I won’t be using it anymore. :)

“But, it’s a dry heat”

Ahh Vegas in the summertime! Who doesn’t love a steady two months of triple digit temps? Funny thing is, once you live here for a few years, the weather barely bothers you. I think people with kids have it tougher because of hot car seats and such, but us adults really get acclimated fairly quickly. I’ve always joked that Vegas is one of the only places in the world where you’ll here, “Man, it sure is nice. It’s only 99 outside.” Still, prior to living here, I thought people who said, “but, it’s a dry heat” were on some sort of crack. 110 degrees is damn hot no matter if it’s dry or not… Well, after living here 5 years (and one week) I’ve found myself fully understanding the difference and it’s now a saying that I’ve used a lot. If I wasn’t already sold on the dry heat, this week has definitely closed the deal for me!

On Tuesday after work, Chris and I drove to California to pick up our daughter who had been staying with grandma in Lomita. We got there in time for dinner at Captain Kidd’s and then we both went to the movies with friends/family. We then crashed at my sister’s place and set the alarm for 6:30 so we could get up and drive down to the beach to run on the strand. Walking out the door we both noted how humid the air was in Lomita. We had no idea what we were in store for.

We arrived in Redondo Beach about 15 minutes later. We parked on the Esplanade and got out to start our run. That’s when it hit us. 75% humidity! It was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. What was worse was trying to breathe through it. We walked down to the strand and began our warmup. After taking the first 3 steps I was soaked. It was horrible. By the time we were done with our 30 minute run I was twice as sweaty as I would have been had I been running in Las Vegas and the temperature outside was no higher than 75 degrees.

So, next time somebody says, “But, it’s a dry heat” you don’t need to look at them like they are completely mental. There is actually something to it.

Not as ignorant, still blissful

This morning at just before 7:00 we met up with Justin, Jessi, Nita and Matthew along with nearly 100 other people who showed up to run with the Las Vegas Roadrunners. After a quick pep-talk from Tim, we broke up in to groups based on your expected time to finish the race.

The run was supposed to be 30 minutes. The groups would run 15 minutes out and then 15 minutes back. I made a few mistakes this morning and it caused me to run too hard and long.

Here is the list of mistakes I made:

I know for sure my heart rate was somewhere north of 160 and probably closer to 180. My “zone” is around 135-140.
I started out in the 2:15 half-marathon group. I ran with them for a while but eventually stopped to walk. At some point they turned around and i didn’t realize it. Because I didn’t have a watch, i just sorta kept going… When I finally turned around, I was one of the last runners heading back. Oops!

For next week, I will correct my previous mistakes and I will drop down to the 2:30 half-marathon group. We will see how that goes.