Tuesday, December 8, 2009

2009 RnR Las Vegas Marathon - Race Report - Pt. 2


Mile #7 to Mile #12 heading towards downtown Las Vegas and the turn around. Temp remained in the 30's to low 40's, but the wind was still kicking around 10-12mph. As we cleared the tall casinio's, the sunshine warmed me up a little and I ditched the beanie and gloves. Ditching the gloves was a bad idea. My hands remained cold for then next 2 hours.

I had intended to use my Chickamauga fluid strategy by taking a water bottle through 13 miles. This worked strategy worked great the first time and allowed me to breeze through all the water stops that were very crowded with all of the runners on the course. At Chickamauga, it was kind of a last second strategy, where I stopped by a 7-11 on the way to the Marathon, and kind of winged it. This time I found a sweet water bottle at the airport on the way into Vegas, and kept it in the room since Thursday. Saturday night, I'm looking all around the room for the water bottle and can't find it anywhere. Crap, the service lady must of tossed it, even though it clearly was NOT IN or NEAR the trash can. Back up plan was to get a ginormous water bottle at one
of the shops at the Belligio. It was just too big to carry, and I dumped it about1/2 mile into the run.

At 10.5 the full takes a right out west of town, and the Half Marathoner's keep going down LV Blvd to the finish line. Mile time come in at : 8:33 - 8:36 - 8:34 - 8:44 - 8:47 - 8:58 (1:25:38 at Mile #10.)


Mile #13 to Mile #20 - Almost imperceptible during the run, but there is a
500 foot elevation change from mile
8 to mile 20, up hill. So much for a flatcourse. It's an out and back between mile 15 and 24 and watch the front runners going by in the other direction.
My legs began to feel heavy, and I
walked through several water stops and even stopped to stretch my quad and hip, trying to get loosened up. Mostly the same scenery. Not much crowd support and the bands were far between. I had my music player on anyway, so the lack of music didn't bother me. I was just trying to stay motivated and plug out the miles. 9:16 - 8:45 - 8:54 - 9:46 - 9:23 - 9:32 - 9:43 - 9:32 (2:58:10.51 at Mile #20)

Mile #21 to Mile #26.2 - What (gradually) goes up, must come (gradually) down. And so it was. Elevation dropped off 250 feet over last 10K. I was wondering where some of the speed came from. I didn't realize it during the race, it was so imperceptible, and when you are tired, it's sometimes hard to tell if you are going up or down. Still walked though most water stops, but never hit the proverbial wall. The Half marathoners finished up coming down LV Blvd into the Mandalay Bay front parking lot, but they banished us Full marathoners to come in the "back door" and finish on the side of the parking lot ??? Oh well. I kept thinking about "leaving it all on the race course", so I stepped the last 1.2 up as best I could. Unlike last marathon, where I was passing a lot of folks, I was the one getting passed up, until the last mile. The one thing that Rock N Roll does for the Full is to announce the names as we came in. The announcer is very up beat and it was cool still having good crowds pushing you on in that final last 385 yards (which I counted every one.) I was glad to get it over with and find Stephanie. They had setup a cool TEXT UPDATE thing, and it texted her as soon as I finished and she found me very fast. After marathon food was a joke, not even going to comment on it. 8:44 - 9:18 - 9:37 - 9:22 - 9:31 - 8:43


Official Time = 3:56:56
Garmin Time = 3:56:20 (set to auto pause).

All in All it was a great time out in Vegas. Stephanie was ultra-supportive and helped me wobble back the 1.5 miles to the Bellagio and get me into the bathtub. She even got a couple of large bags of ice and got me a great ice bath.











8 comments:

  1. Nice job, Chris! Way to push through and come out strong at the end. So great that your wife was there for support!!! That medal is really awesome! I'm glad that you wrote up your RR, I've been wondering how the new course was and what runners thought of it. Thanks for sharing!! Congrats!

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  2. Again.... Awesome Job Chris. You should be very very proud of this. If I got a PR in Vegas it would probably be very scary what would transpire next.

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  3. congrats again! great race recap - enjoyed reading about it :) nice pics too!

    although it sounds like there were a few low points, it still sounds like it was a good experience overall for you and that's what matters most! congrats on another marathon, hope you are enjoying some downtime now!

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  4. Great job, despite the few bumps in the road (elevation changes, water bottle, etc). Do you have the next marathon planned out already, or are you swearing them off for awhile?

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  5. Nevermind my last question, I just saw that you have the CMM listed as your next marathon.

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  6. Jesse - that's a great, loaded question. Stephanie is wanting to run the 1/2 at CMM, and I think I will run that in support of her. So, really, it may be a Fall Full for me next. I'm going to reveal some of my plans for next year next week. May be some BIGGER things I want to punish myself with ;)

    Jill/Mark/Lindsay - thank you guys so much for following me and offering support (you too Jesse) along the way. It means a lot.

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  7. Chris,

    I am sorry I am so late to the party...

    CONGRATS! So awesome that you PRd! You'll get that 3:40 before you know it. That stinks that it wasn't as smooth "event wise" as it should have been.

    I hope all of your soreness has subsided. I'm excited that your wife wants to join the fun. I will certainly send you what I used (very conservative). Shoot me an E-mail at www.mileswithmellie@gmail.com.

    Have a great weekend! ...Mel

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  8. Mel - I think it was probably some post-marathon blues that had me down. Mostly it was pretty good (except the food).

    Thanks for all your great encouragement and advice through my training, it really helped.

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Thanks for commenting. :)