The Last Virginia Beach Half Marathon

This past weekend I ran my very last Rock n Roll Virginia Beach Half Marathon. It was the 20th Anniversary of the race!

Virginia Beach Rock n Roll Half Marathon Weekend: A Complete Review

 

As you may know, we spent a long weekend in Virginia Beach taking part in the Rock n Roll Virginia Beach half marathon weekend of events. We've recapped this race several times before ( it's one of our favorites), so we'll try to keep this review brief while trying to touch on each event.

 

Friday: The Expo

 

Meeting Maria from Lilmysninja

 

*In all honesty, we thought this expo was one of the best expos last year.  It was very "interactive" with games, prizes, things to do, etc.   

 

*This year it went a little down hill.  The sponsor, Brooks, really dropped the ball on this one.  No real interactive stuff, no prizes, no gait analyses, no smoothie station, nothing.     

 

*  We didn't stay at the expo long on Friday and only went back for a brief time on Saturday to exchange an item.             

 

* The best thing about the expo was the people that we got to meet. We not only met Maria at the expo but we saw Pam and Christine again and got to meet Megan for the first time.

 

* Since the Salted Watermelon GU was the official GU of this race, we thought we would get it in our registration bag, but we didn't.  We did get some free samples of GU once we were inside the expo area, but not Watermelon ( you had to buy that flavor).

 

TIPS:  *We learned that if you are signed up for a longer distance ( half marathon) and you felt you wanted to drop down to a smaller distance ( half marathon relay), you were able to do that with out an extra cost.

*The folks giving out the bibs are volunteers and you should ALWAYS double check and make sure they give you the right bib and timing chip.

                                                          Saturday: The Beach Mile

*This was the first year for this one mile race on the sand. With the amount of people we thought would be running, we thought it would be complete chaos but it was organized very well and once we got running it didn't seem crowded at all.

*This was a fun run! Everyone just lined up where they thought their pace would be, nothing official.  I thought for sure people would be kicking up sand while running but it wasn't like that at all. People weren't trying to be speedy. Everyone just took it slow because it was quite a struggle, but in a good way.

We met up with Maria again before the race and finally met our friend Heather! We all were able to run the beach mile together!

*This run may have been a bit easier had it been on wet or packed sand. This was not. It was in the deepest sand! Our quads were certainly feeling it!

We got some great swag for only running one mile!
 

TIPS:  *Wear old shoes. We debated not even wearing shoes at all but wasn't sure if that would be allowed. We did see others that didn't wear shoes. I think that was probably the way to go but the way my luck has been lately, I worried that someone would step on my feet!

 Sunday: Half Marathon Day

Heather, Lacey, Meranda, and Kathryn

 

Side Note: As I was preparing my clothes for race morning,  I noticed that my timing chip, the thing you put on your shoe, did not have my name on it. It had the name Erica on it. I was a little confused on this. I checked my bib and MY name was on the bib. I noticed the race number on the bib and the race number on the timing chip did not match! Apparently someone attached the wrong timing chip to my bib. So did that mean that this Erica girl had MY chip on her bib?  We decided to put a tweet out to see if anyone knew this girl.  What if she didn't even noticed that she didn't have the right timing chip?  In the end, one of our friends told us that there would be a Solutions desk at the race start. They did take care of the situation but we were certainly stressed out about it all night!

 

* Crowd support for this race is amazing!  There are plenty of water stops and once you get into the residential areas people have hoses and sprinklers out for you to run through.

*There are bands playing music throughout the course but there are spots where you can't here any of the music.

 

*The second part of the race is where all the fun stuff gets passed out.  Around mile 8 you run through a military camp but they are giving out GUs.

 

*Miles 9 -11 people where giving out wet sponges, ice pops, skittles, gummie bears, and I actually saw someone giving out Cigarettes (I'm sure that was just a joke though).

 

* Medical staff were great and gave out ice bags right away at the finish line.

 

*I felt that we needed trick or treat bags at the end of the race because they gave out so many goodies. Water, Gatorade, Chocolate milk, Pop Chips, bananas, Power Bars, Yogurt, Granola, etc.  Unfortunately we didn't have any place to put all this stuff so we just took a drink and kept moving.

All the great bling we earned this weekend. The middle medal is the Remix for doing both races and it is a spinner medal!

 

TIPS: *If you do the beach mile don't forget to wear your challenge bracelet on race day so you get your remix medal.  *This race is always a hot one and this year it broke the record for highest humidity on race day. If you are hesitant, be cautious and take it easy. *ALWAYS check your race bib and timing chip BEFORE you leave the expo. People can make mistakes.
 

                                                                     The Concerts

 

*The Rock n Roll Virginia Beach Half marathon weekend is held in conjunction with the Music Festival. Your race registration allows you entrance into all the weekend's concerts. There are Concerts going on the Main Stage on the beach starting late Saturday afternoon and going into evening.  Last year we spent some time on the beach listening to the music but this year we were just too tired and knew we didn't want to be in the sun that long before our half marathon the next day.

 

*Sunday night's headlining act was Train and we definitely went to see them! We saw them back in 2012 at RnR VA Beach and they put on a great show so we knew for sure we wanted to see them again!   After the concert we stayed out on the beach and watched the fireworks show. What a great way to celebrate our 13.1 accomplishment! ( 14.1 if you count the race on Saturday)

 

TIP: Even if you don't run one of the races, you can still buy tickets to the concerts. Check Groupon. Our friend bought one from there.

 

Our personal thoughts from this race:

 

 

Overall I am happy with my time, despite how hot it got towards the end. I don't feel like I was totally spent afterwards and my legs were feeling good. I felt I could have pushed a bit more, but I do have Philadelphia right around the corner. With cooler weather to come, maybe I will be able to push myself more during that race. ~L

 

Since I signed up for this race last minute I had no time goal in mind what so ever.  However, I do have a time goal in mind for when I run RnR Vegas in November. In the end, I finished this race only 3 minutes later then what my goal for Vegas is ( which I thought was pretty good considering the circumstances).  I probably could have done better, but I really pooped out after mile 11.  But I'm okay with that, I knew I was running a little cautious due to my hip ( and I had no chest pain while running by the way, thanks for everyone who was concerned).  I saw a runner being put up on a stretcher as I turned to run the last mile on the boardwalk and that was a good reminder for me not to push myself if I wasn't feeling it. ~M

 

Did you run this weekend?

 

If you are looking for more info on RnR VA Beach you might also want to check out our posts from last year.                                                        Race Expo  

Race Day       

   VIP Experience