Rock n Roll Las Vegas 5K

I suppose it is time for us to recap our Las Vegas experience.  We are not going to recap the expo because lets face it, once you've been to one expo, they are pretty much all the same and nothing too interesting happened.

The races kicked off on Saturday night with the first one being the 5K.  The 5K start, finish, and race village all took place in the parking lot of the SLS Hotel located on the North end of the Las Vegas strip. Because our resort was on the North end, we could easily walk to and from the 5K race and the expo. The expo was located at the Las Vegas Convention Center on the North end as well.

We were all undecided on what to wear. It was a bit chilly but I knew I would warm up as we ran so I decided to just wear my tank top.

Looking back, I shouldn't have worn a black tank top to a night race. Especially when there wasn't anything reflective on it.

I'm not sure how many corrals there were, but they must have been more crowded than anticipated because the security started splitting each corral into two.

The race stated at 6:30 pm and it was already dark.  There was very little light at the start line and beyond. This was kind of a problem because the first little bit was like running through an alley. There was gravel and pot holes and I don't think anyone expected that because I heard a lot of comments about it. People where definitely being cautious right out of the gate.

Once we got through that, we were running on the street the rest of the time. This was very well lit but we had to be cautious of the light reflectors along the road. 

The roads we ran on were not closed down, there was heavy traffic on them. This made the section we were suppose to run on very narrow ( and a lot of it was on the uneven surface of the shoulder of the road). At some points we were able to run on the sidewalk but there were also some non runners walking on them as well so we had to watch for them. The roads were also cracked and full of pot holes.  Shortly after mile one a runner in front of us tripped. She went down hard.  We made sure she was okay. She ended up scraping her knees. This was a reminder to us to be very cautious on the rest of the run.

The 5K race was basically a run around the block and we did run on the strip for a little part of the way, so that was fun!  The crowd support was really great too.  As we came back around to cross the finish line, they had some arches set up with Christmas lights for us to run through.

They had the standard finish line snacks and support at the end. We had about a half hour left before the concert started and we were starting to get a little chilly so we just decided to start walking back to the resort.  Overall I thought the atmosphere was a lot of fun but I didn't like running beside traffic.

 

This was the first time that Rock n Roll offered a 5K race in Vegas and I am glad we did it. I'm glad they had a variety of race distance so lots of people could be involved.

         I'm loving the 5K shirt we got and was pleasantly surprised that it was long sleeved.

 

This 5K medal is huge ( and heavy). It's probably one of the largest 5K medals  I've earned. (It's actually a bit larger than the Half Marathon medal)

 

 

 

What is your favorite 5K medal?