Las Vegas Rock n Roll half marathon - Matt Aaronson
Short version: This was a C race and I had a brutal week at work leading up to this race involving a trip to Europe, massive amounts of eating and drinking with colleagues and not a lot of sleep. And I'm getting sick with a cough/cold. The weekend was to be a fun weekend with some friends in Vegas, with, you guessed it, lots of eating and drinking and not a lot of sleep. But I'm in good running shape so I knew even if the race went badly I'd have a respectable time. When the race started I went out really hard (~6:15/mi) with the intent to positive-split the race since the last 4 miles are uphill. I got a bad side stitch just before mile 9 and ran one mile at around 7:00/mi pace, but managed to pull myself together and run the last 3 miles at 6:38 pace, finishing with an overall pace of 6:30 and a time of exactly 1:25:00. Getting the 1:25 required running the last ~quarter mile at 5:43/mi with my eyes glued to the clocks over the finish line. It is a 1:10 PB although if I had behaved better this week I'm sure I could have run faster. My time was good for 64th OA and 5th in my AG. The race was a LOT of fun, tons of energy and overall a great experience that I'd recommend. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/405762046
Longer version:
My wife and I signed up for the Rock n Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon for fun. My wife wanted a goal to train for after having a baby at the end of June and I thought it would be a fun way to stay in shape after running the Chicago Marathon 5 weeks ago. But mostly it was to have a fun weekend in Vegas with no kids. Also we arranged to meet some old friends there so there were 7 of us ready to have a great time.
After the Chicago Marathon I took a week off then followed a somewhat formal training plan loosely based on Pfitzinger's "6 weeks between marathons" plan. In the weeks after the marathon I ended up with weekly mileage of 8.5, 34, 45, 40 then 17 the week of the race (30.1 including the race itself). Long runs were 0, 10, 16, 12 then the race itself of 13.1. The one twist was that I got back on the bike after 18 weeks of run-only and did 2x 60' on the bike in addition to the 4 runs per week, with most of the bike workouts being FTP-heavy 3x8'@z4 main sets.
I recovered from the marathon much more quickly than I expected and was actually feeling pretty good about the potential to lay down a great time. Then this week (race week) I put on a clinic for how not to prepare for a race:
Monday: travel to Europe overnight Sunday, meetings all day Monday, massive dinner of heavy German food, stay up until 1am drinking with colleagues
Tuesday: Run 6 miles, go to meetings, massive meal catered by Michelin-starred chefs, stay up until 3am drinking very heavily with colleagues
Wednesday: Run 6 miles, go to meetings, yet another massive meal, stay up until 2:30am drinking very, very, very heavily with colleagues in a smoke-filled bar (it was an ugly night)
Thursday: Run 5 miles, go to meetings, big dinner again, bailed early from the bar at 1am…couldn't face another night of drinking and smoke-filled clubs
Friday: Woke up at 5:45am (4:45 sleep in total), went to the airport and flew from Berlin to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to San Francisco (>11 hours), then SFO to Vegas. No sleep on plane due to work. Arrived in Vegas, did packet pickup, then went to a 9pm dinner with some old high school friends (pizza), and a few beers. Then some more drinks at another bar, then into bed at 1am.
Saturday: Slept in until 10am then breakfast followed by the usual "walking around casinos". Met my wife who flew in, went back to the expo to get her packet then 8pm dinner (literally almost all protein and no carbs other than 2 pieces of bread), lots of drinking again, in bed by 1:30am. Downed 80oz of G2 throughout the day.
Race day: Night race so slept in until 8:30am. Pre-race brunch of omelette and pancakes at 11:30am, ~1500 cals. Downed 32oz of Gatorade throughout the day. Put my feet up for a few hours and watched football until 3:30pm when we all met to go to the race.
Overall I decided that having fun with my old friends and my wife in Vegas was a higher priority than laying down a super-fast race. My big race of the year was the Chicago Marathon and I had to leave this to be a true "C-race". I had mixed feelings about that since I did actually do some pretty good training after the marathon, but came to terms with the priority of the race and the importance of all the stuff going on this week and was cool with that. All that said, I loosely still planned to target sub-1:25, 6:29/mile.
The race atmosphere was awesome in Vegas. A lot of fun. Craptons of people. I was in the first corral. Knowing that the first part of the race was gently downhill and the last 4 miles are uphill, my plan was to start fast and positive-split the race. The weather was good for running. Not too much wind and mid-60's temps which quickly declined into the high 50's at nightfall after the start.
Per the plan I started quick, first 2 miles 6:14, 6:13.
I then settled in behind one of the top females running the full marathon. She was being paced by someone and given a slight headwind I fell in behind her and took the pace she was doing. A pack developed and we all ran together until around the 10k. The miles clicked by at a nice fast pace: 6:23, 6:30, 6:21, 6:25, 6:28. My 5k split was 19:35 (6:18/mi) and my 10k split was 39:34 (6:27/mi for the second 5k). I took a gel at around mile 4…that was the only gel I took other than the one 5 mins before the start.
At some point I noticed my HR was in the low 180's which was somewhat disconcerting. That's pretty high for me that early in a race. But I was going faster than normal…actually I was running a pace at which my HR in training would be in the mid-180's. I don't let HR govern my pace in races and from an RPE standpoint I felt good, so I just kept going.
Around mile 9 I got a brutal side stitch. I had to slow down substantially. I didn't see the mile 8 marker so the average pace of 6:27 for miles 8 and 9 masks the fact that mile 9 was around ~7:00/mi as I battled the side stitch. The next mile was 6:46 but the stitch was starting to fade by the end of that mile. I suspect the stitch was due to the brunch being too close to the race start and if I do another evening race I'd aim to have the brunch a lot earlier, like 8am.
The uphill miles started and by now the crowd was really thinned out. A lot of people were slowing significantly and I was able to pass some guys really strongly even though I was running a lot slower. The real bummer was that starting at mile 10 there were no working clocks. This was really problematic because I wanted to know how I was tracking for the 1:25. I had set the screens on my Garmin in anticipation of having clocks…I could have swapped to another screen but truthfully I was starting to get to the point where I couldn't be messing around with my watch. In any case I saw paces and mile substantially slower than 6:29/mi but didn't know how quickly I was burning all the time that I knew I had banked.
Mile 12 was 6:39/mi so I tried to pick it up a little for mile 13 but I was unable to speed up very much. About a quarter of a mile from the finish I saw the big clock and realized I'd have to really jack up the pace to get 1:25. According to TrainingPeaks I did that last quarter mile at a pace of 5:49/mi – I was a man on a mission at that point, with nothing in my mind other than that damn clock over the finish.
I knew my watch was around 8 sec offset from the race clock and it would be close. My Garmin recorded 1:25:02 and when I saw that I was pretty pissed. It might be a C-race and I was cool with that, but to miss something by 2 seconds sucks. I stayed pissed while walking about a mile back to the hotel, then I got online and saw my time was exactly 1:25:00. SWEET!!!
I looked up my wife's time and she had just finished in 2:18 – far from a PB but not bad for having had a baby 4 and a half months ago. She got back to the hotel and we met up with our friends (most of whom had also done the race) and headed over to the steakhouse at the Wynn for some massive porterhouse steaks cooked rare. That was awesome.
My resulting VDOT is 54.46 which is extremely consistent with the VDOT of 54.32 from my marathon time a few weeks ago.
Overall a great weekend in Vegas!!!
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/405762046
Comments
Great race, especially with the week that lead up to it.
I would guess your side-stitch was simply your liver revolting from the week of drinking and fatty foods. That's generally when I get them, but your side-stitch slowed down pace is faster than my fully healthy and tapered 10k pace!
Smoking fast time though. Crazy fast!!
Yep, he runs like a jack-rabbit.
Now we've got a new standard for Taper Week ... bratwurst, beer, and second hand smoke? Ah, to be young and foolish again ...