Disclaimer: I received an entry into the Rock n Roll Las Vegas Half marathon as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!

Race #2 for the weekend!

I was feeling a little of that leg pain from last week on Sunday morning when Mai and I were walking to and from the BibRave brunch.  So after getting back to the hotel, I rested my legs until it was time to head to the start line.  I still cleared my daily step goal well before the race started.  😛

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Learning from the previous day, we left the hotel with plenty of time to walk to the start line area giving us time for gear drop, bathroom stops, the We Run Social meet up, and whatever else we needed.    And unlike the previous day, we accomplished it all with time to spare! And I met Helly! If you look really close in the We Run Social pic, you can see my hat in the back.  😛    Then we separated and Mai made her way to her corral and Kate and I went to squeeze our way through the people towards our corral to wait.

The second I knew I had convinced Kate to fly to Las Vegas from Texas and run her very first half marathon, I knew I was running it with her, no matter what.   In the week leading up to the race, she was worried about slowing me down but I said to not even worry about the pace, we were aiming for ‘party speed’.  😎

With an impressive fire show for each corral start, we were off!  That said this is going to be a little different from my usual recaps.   Mile 1 was our fastest, mile 2 was our slowest and everything else fell in between.

Recent events moved the start line up to New York New York but the course still went south towards the Las Vegas sign before turning around and coming back.  These miles were quiet and dark as a moment of silence for Las Vegas.  Which made the cheaters we observed just past mile 1 even worse.   The course was an out and back and this part of the street had a large center divider.  Just past the first water station, 3 people just jumped on over to the other side and joined the runners on the way back into town.  WTH????!  Kate and I and 3 runners behind us were like did we really just see that?

Then came mile 2.  We both admitted we could use a bathroom.  Waiting in the corrals had been long and there were no port-a -potties near the corrals.  So we stopped.  And waited forever.  Seriously…this was a 20 minute mile.   7 of that was non moving time according to my Garmin.  The bathrooms were set up in an odd way that both sides of the course could access them but it didn’t make sense for lines and was causing serious confusion.  And apparently we picked the wrong line because the person before me took forever.  To the point where the lady in line behind me wanted to knock on the bathroom door.    And can I just say that entering a port a potty in the dark is like entering a scary unknown land? 😛

Finally, we were on our way.  We were running 1 minute, walking 1 minute.  Hit the 5K mark and all was shiny.   A little past that I told Kate she officially had less than 10 miles to go.  Another runner near us thanked me for saying that. 😀

3.6 is when disaster struck.   I heard a very verbal inhale, saw a wince and then Kate was limping.   Her right shin was not happy and not happy in a very bad way.  We started walking.  I said let’s walk to 4.5 and see how you feel.  The answer was no better.  I actually tried to get her to stop but she was having none of that.   All right, then let’s go slowly.

So we walked.   We embraced the party speed and took in the sights of the Strip.  All of the casinos and all of their lights.  Counting the CVS’s and Walgreens turned into our version of the license plate game.  No, seriously, why are there so many within such a short distance from each other? And why were more people cutting the course?!?!😡

I took a ton of pictures.  Except the sketchy mile.  The Fremont area was awesome and worth the sketch mile to get there though.  We got water at every aid station and Gatorade.  We stopped at a medical tent and Kate had them apply some Icy Hot to see if it would help.   Every now and then I would jog in place just to reset my feet.  I had worn my old Adidas and they’re too big, not exactly built for walking, my feet were sliding around.  Jogging every now and again helped ease some of the pressure my feet were feeling.

We had a Ghost bride moment too.  I looked up to see a runner dressed like a bride just standing forlornly all alone up ahead.  The way the light was hitting her, she looked a little ghost like.  So then we starting cracking jokes that we needed the Winchester boys.

We were walking, we were slower than planned and Kate was hurt but if you look at the race pictures the photographers took, we’re smiling in all of them.    Kate kept telling me to leave her behind and run ahead and I kept saying hell no.  We started together, we’re finishing together.

And we did- 3:27:49🙂 We collected our awesome spinning medal and went straight to the med tent so Kate could get ice on her leg.  Then we headed out through the long staging area getting the goodies.   Once again, no bags were provided to carry everything but I had come prepared- I had shoved 2 dog bags (clean of course) into my belt so that way we could shove the snacks all in those.  Then we headed for our Remix medals and then found a spot to rest before beginning the walk back to the hotel.  Where was a taxi when you needed one?

So this wasn’t the race we had expected but it was still an awesome race.