Las Vegas Marathon

I ran the Las Vegas Marathon on Sunday Dec 10, 2006. Why did I choose to run in Las Vegas? Well, my wife Maggie and I wanted to go some place fun for a long weekend, and what place is more fun than Vegas?

This was the second year that the "New Las Vegas Marathon" has been held. There used to be a different marathon on a different course, but that one disappeared and now this one exists. This marathon started and ended at the south end of The Strip, in front of the Mandalay Bay hotel & casino. We got a room at the Luxor right next door, which was very convenient to get to all marathon-related activities.

The start of the marathon was at 6am. While this meant that I had to get up rediculously early, it wasn't so bad since I was still basically on east coast time from having arrived in town just one day earlier. And I had gone to sleep at about 8:30pm the night before, so a 4:30am wakeup wasn't bad at all. I had joked that I would be setting a record for the earliest bedtime ever on a Saturday night in Vegas, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one going to sleep at that hour.

It was never explained to me exactly why the race started so early, but I assume it was in order to get the majority of the race over with before the sun got too high and too strong. Considering that sunrise wasn't until 6:42am, it made for a dark start. And a chilly one. Actually, I was prepared for a start-time temp in the 30s, as that is what the low for the day was supposed to be. However, before the race I overheard someone say that it was 52 degrees already. I thought that was a little high, and I would have guessed that it was mid-40s. Nonetheless, it was a nice temperature for running. The only weather-related problem was the wind, which was blowing fairly strongly with some pretty powerful gusts.

My goal for the race was 4 hours, although I was afraid that might be a little too ambitious. My previous best was 4:17, so 4:00 would be quite an improvement. I know I had trained very hard, but 17 minutes is a lot to make up. So I was hoping for 4:00, but was expecting something around 4:05.

Between the marathon and half marathon, there were 16,000 runners. Not the largest marathon around, but fairly large. And as with any marathon of that size, there was quite a madhouse in the corrals before the start. Of course I was hoping to start near the 4:00 pacing group, but I actually got stuck much farther back. I was just in front of the 5:30 pacing group! That meant I had a lot of ground to make up!

After the gun, it took me about 7.5 minutes to get across the start line. In itself, that certainly didn't bother me. But I was rather annoyed at having to pass so many slower people. Since I was starting near the 5:30 crowd, it was inevitable that there would be some slower people in front of me. However, I was still passing WALKERS up to nearly the two mile mark! Walkers certainly should not have been THAT far ahead of the 5:30 mark to begin with. So while I was starting too far back, it was apparent that some people were starting too far forward.

I did eventually move up the pack. I was worried about losing too much time because of weaving thru the crowd, but I still managed to pass the 2-mile mark in 17:50 according to my watch. I was very surprised that I was moving that fast thru the crowd, but I was pleased. If I was smart, I would have known something was wrong...

The first few miles of the race were very exciting. Running north up the world-famous Las Vegas Strip was really amazing. Before long, the sun was coming up and The Strip was coming to life. For the first few 6 or 7 miles, up The Strip and thru Fremont Street (the old Las Vegas), the run was very exciting.

I had long ago passed the 5:00 pacing group, then the 4:30 pacing group. I eventually caught the 4:15 pacing group at about the 9 mile mark. Next on my list was the 4:00 group. I figured they must have started 3 or 4 minutes ahead of me at the starting line, so I figured that even if I didn't catch them I should still have a chance of breaking four hours. But I knew that if I did catch them, I would have those 3 or 4 miuntes in the bank. However, while I had managed to do better than a 9:00 pace over the first two miles while dodging traffic, I had somehow been doing worse than a 9:00 pace afterwards. I didn't know how that was possible, but I was still pretty close to a four hour pace, and I was feeling very good with a lot left in the tank. I was confident I could make it up in the second half.

By this time, we had passed beyond Freemont Street and were now into a much less exciting area of town. Not much to see here. Until now, we had been heading primarily north. At exactly the 10 mile mark, we turned west. And into the wind. It hadn't been noticable up to this point, but now heading west with no buildings around to block it, it became noticable. Still, I was feeling good and I keep plugging along.

I finally realized that there was something fishy about the distance markers at the halfway point. I passed mile 13 at almost exactly two hours on my watch, but I didn't pass the timing mat at the halfway point until 2:01:50. That should have been at 13.1 miles, and it shouldn't have taken me 2 minutes to go 0.1 miles. So by my calculations, either the 13 mile mark was really at 12.9, or the timing mats were at 13.2. Or maybe it was worse than that...

Then I passed the 14 mile mark only 6 minutes later. No way I was going that fast. It took me 7 minutes more to get to 15. Now, according to my calculations, I was way ahead of a four hour pace. And yet I saw no sign of the 4:00 pacing group. I continued on, confident that I was moving at a consistent speed. However, it took me about 13 minutes to reach mile 16! Now I KNEW something was wrong. The wind was strong, but there's no way I ran a 13 minute mile. Some of these mile markers were wrong. I just didn't know which ones...

Not knowing if I was on pace or not, I tried to pick up the speed. For the next few miles, I seemed to be doing fairly consistent 9:00 miles. This gave me confidence that the mileage marker snafus were a thing of the past. I passed the 20 mile mark at 3:01:40 on my watch. That gave me over 58 minutes to cover 6.2 miles in order to break four hours. We had turned south around mile 16, and thus the wind was no longer such a factor. The terrain was still boring as heck, but I was feeling good and was ready to move on. Quick math in my head told me that I needed not much more than a 9:30 pace to break four hours, and I certainly felt good enough to do that. I was confident that I had paced myself very well up to this point. I continued at the same pace that I assumed was about 9:00 and began calculating how much I might break four hours by. The only nagging thing was that I still saw no sign of the 4:00 pace group.

The next "mile" was where the panic set in. After a while, I looked at my watch and realized that 11 minutes had passed and I still had not seen mile 21. Maybe I just overlooked it. Two more minutes, and still no mile 21. I finally asked a guy running next to me if he had seen it, and he said no. What was going on? Two more minutes, and there it is. It took me 15 minutes to go from 20 to 21! Once again, mile markers were all messed up! Now, instead of being well ahead of a four hour pace, I was suddenly well behind it. I had only about 43 minutes to cover 5.2 miles. I was hoping that 21 was late, as opposed to the rest being early. But I had no way to know for sure. I picked up the pace even more, hoping I could cover the last few miles at maybe an 8:30 pace and hope for the best. I felt good, so it was worth a shot.

22 and 23 came about as expected. But then 24 was another long mile. I was chugging along with everything I had, and it still took me almost 12 minutes to go from 23 to 24. I passed 24 at 3:51 on my watch. 2.2 miles to go in 9 minutes? I don't think so. Four hours was history. Oh well.

The good news is that the last couple miles were short, i.e it was actually less than 2.2 miles remaining. Knowing that I wouldn't hit 4:00, I had slowed down a little. That was also partly due to a very minor tightening of my left calf muscle. Nothing major, but I felt there was no need to push it. Despite the slowed pace, I still managed to reach the finish line at 4:05:03 on my watch. 14 minutes to cover the last 2.2 miles. Wow. I had single "miles" slower than that. Incredible...

Needless to say, I was extremely annoyed at the erroneous mile markers. Not just one bad mile marker, but a good percentage of them. How difficult is it to measure a course and place the mile markers at the right point? And I was not the only one. Every other runner I talked to around the finish line was complaining about the same thing. And apparently the half marathon messed up mile markers as well. In the grand scheme of things, I should be pleased with my time. I had set a PR by about 12 minutes, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at. But I couldn't escape the feeling that I could have shaved those extra 5 minutes off my time if I had only known what my true pace was.

The annoyance didn't quite end there, however. At the finish line, I was greeted by my wife and friends who were there. And then I went to look for water and food. The water was available in abundance, but I couldn't find the food. I asked a volunteer and was told "we ran out". Ran out of food? At just past the four hour mark? There were still thousands of runners yet to finish! I guess that was the last straw, and I decided to get the heck out of there and get back to my hotel room. On the way out, I did manage to see a truck unloading a few more crates of bananas, so I was at least able to grab a couple.

I could forgive them for the relatively boring course between miles 7 and 23, since I knew going in what the course would be like. And I could certainly forgive them for the windy conditions, because nobody can be held accountable for the weather. But the mile marker mishaps and the lack of food at the end should not have been such an issue. It might have been a new PR for me (officially 4:04:56, which was dead nuts on my prediction, although I didn't find this out until I got back home to New Jersey and checked the website). And I am quite pleased that I made it thru the whole marathon without any walk breaks (other than walking for a couple seconds thru water stops at miles 13 and 25), which is a marathon first for me. And I am quite pleased that I continued to feel strong all the way through. But I still left feeling somewhat disappointed in the overall experience...