Sean & I headed to Vegas a few weeks ago for the RnR Las Vegas Marathon. We had Tour Passes and one extra race each so I looked it up to see if we could use the pass for the 5K and when I found out we could, we signed up.
Since Sean is a run streaker – he’s almost at 4 years of running a minimum of 2 miles every day so I knew we were going to run on Saturday regardless so this 5K was a great way to get in a nice & easy shake-out run the day before the marathon.
The 5K was by the SLS Hotel on the other end of the strip from us so we took the monorail from near our hotel down to the race start area.
The monorail was busy, but not too bad and we made it to the start area in about 15 minutes. Once there we took a little tour of the hotel to get to the actual start.
We got there about 20 minutes before the race was to start so we hit up the port-a-potties, barely no lines and then took a few photos and headed over to the corrals. I was in the 2nd corral, but the corrals were too small for all the participants so we waited until corral 1 left and then we crawled thru the barriers to get inside.
They started the race in the parking lot, which is ok, I guess, except that you hear the announcer say, be extremely careful until you get out of the parking lot because it’s not super smooth. So needless to say that slowed down the first mile quite a bit. Before the race, Sean & I discussed that we didn’t have to run together – he’s quite a bit faster than I am and very very rarely runs 5Ks so I wanted him to see what he could do :).
Right after the start, there was a cool little light up bubble tunnel – that was kind of a nice touch to kick off the race. They had colored lights at the end of the race as well.
We both started in corral 2, but once we were started I didn’t see him again until about 1 mile in when we did a short out and back. I saw Meb running too in this section.
The course itself wasn’t anything super special in my opinion, we did run on the strip for a little bit, they had the far right lane closed for us so there were a lot of cars driving down, which was good & bad. Good because a lot of people were cheering for us and bad because there were a lot of cars with exhaust and smokers which makes it hard to breathe. But all in all it was a decent race and considering I rarely run 5ks, I managed to not only officially PR but run negative splits as well! So another goal checked off my list :).
Sean was waiting for me when I finished the race and Meb had finished just a minute before me so there was a lot of people taking photos with him, etc. Sean said he had hi-fived him at the finish and then got a cool photo of him finishing.
I got my medal, a bottle of water, a banana and some pretzels. I thought the medals were awesome!! They are super cool, unique and really incorporate some interesting elements that showcase where the race was being held.
Afterwards, we took a few photos and then decided to head back to the hotel. We were debating on staying for the concert, Cromeo was playing, but we finished relatively quickly, I heard them announcing corral 8 just as I was finishing the race so we had at least a 1/2 hour or so before the race and I just wanted to relax before the marathon then next day.
So back to the monorail we went, we were able to see some of the runners that were still finishing up from the train. That was pretty cool – it reminded me a bit of Chicago when I was racing from spot to spot to find & cheer Sean on :).
I ended up falling asleep pretty early and then woke up around 11:30pm starving, we never ate dinner – yikes!! So off we went for dinner and then more rest. Less than 24 hours until my 4th marathon!
