FEBRUARY 2025 Monthly Running Challenge

Tldr: The race was cool, I jacked up my fueling and paid for it with the hardest HM I've ever had.

I chose this race for NV because nothing seems more quintessential NV than running the Last Vegas strip at night. While the race itself was very fun, this was the worst I have ever felt during a HM. The evening timing threw everything off from what I usually do on race day. I woke up, had breakfast at a restaurant in my resort, a lemon crepe with berries. It was delicious! I also picked up a baguette to eat later. I came back to the room and spent most of the day watching YouTube videos about road tripping to national parks. I purposefully took it easy because I knew I'd be running this evening. Because I had a bigger breakfast I didn't get hungry like normal for lunch. I ate my baguette, some grapes, and a handful of peanut m&M's and felt fine. That was my mistake. Left the hotel at 3 and wasn't hungry but also didn't bring anything to eat right before the race. By the time I was getting into my corral at 4, I was hungry and all I had was gels. Usually, I don't take gel right before a race because I've just had breakfast, but I was already hungry and I knew that was going to be a problem. So I took a gel right before the start. I was also a little bit dehydrated despite feeling like I had been drinking a lot of water. The very dry air here also meant I should have been drinking way more water than I was used to. So, hungry and dehydrated to start a half marathon. I knew this wasn't going to be fun.

The race starts in front of the New York New York hotel. The Blue Man group was shooting off colored confetti for each starting group, of which there were several. It's a joint start of the 10K and HM totalling 45,000 racers based on the packet pickup stands. The grouped starts did a fantastic job keeping the course from feeling crowded. I was in the third starting group and we started around 4:45.

I abandoned any time goal before the race even started. I was hungry, already had a little bit of a headache, and knew this was going to be a slog. I decided to do the best I could to enjoy the experience. The course starts out heading south past the welcome to Las Vegas sign before flipping around and running the length of the strip. Coming back up the strip I passed the Bellagio while the water show was going on, which was really cool! Also, all that water injected a little bit of humidity into the air and it felt so nice! Along the way there were several DJs and bands themes to different parts of the strip.

Probably 3 to 4 mi in, I started getting a little charlie horse in my side, which usually happens either when I'm dehydrated or I'm hungry, and I was both. Even though I took a gel right before I started, I also my second one at about mile 3, which is earlier than I would typically fuel. I also made sure to stay on top of the salt tablets and drink water at every aid station. That charlie horse would continue to pop up throughout the race.

There were a lot of people out cheering along the newer part of the strip, but as I got into older Vegas the crowds dwindled and it got quieter. The people that were out in that part of the city were super supportive and had great signs. This part of the race was really difficult. My legs and feet were starting to hurt and the lack of fueling was draining all of my energy. Luckily, they were handing out gels on the course so I was able to supplement the stuff that I brought. By this point, I was starting to take walk breaks. My fitness was fine, and I could have run the whole thing without any problems. I probably shouldn't have stopped for walk breaks. It was so hard to get going again and my legs felt stiff but mentally I was so done. Once into older Vegas, the course flips around again to run the final miles back through the strip and finished in front of The Caesars hotel. I have never been so happy to see a finish line!

My one suggestion for improvement is fixing the exit shute. Once you cross the finish line, there's nobody directing people to keep moving. There were so many people just sitting on the ground and clogging up the walkway. It was difficult to navigate through and find out where things were. I got my medal and immediately started scanning for water. For the size of race, I was a little bit surprised at how small the nutrition pickups were at the end. Water was a couple of metal tubs that someone was constantly dumping bottles into but no one handing it out or again, keeping people moving. The snack bag was tiny and contained the sorts of things I would eat maybe before or during a workout but not a lot of stuff that I would eat afterwards. It took me forever just to find a banana and I was so hungry! Once I reached the end of the shute, I had to keep walking to find a pedestrian bridge to get across the street and stopped at basically the first quick place I could find, the Earl of Sandwich. Picked up a hot sandwich, chips, and a Snickers cheesecake. I limped back to my room to eat. After I ate, I showered and realized it was already almost 9:00. I was exhausted and ended up in bed shortly after.

I doubt I'll do another night race, but if I do I will be much more diligent about my food beforehand. And lesson learned about the water. I need way more than I even realized when it's dry.

Originally SC was going to be my PR attempt for this season but, realistically I don’t see my fitness getting to the point I need it to be. So I’m going to use this time to try something new and see how it goes. With the Garmin training plan there was a short time where my fitness was improving, and I was chipping away at the gap between my fitness and my goal. However, I hit a wall. Following the California races it took me longer than expected to recover. Though I was back to running fairly soon afterwards, I didn’t feel like I normally do at that point in a training plan. Fatigue started catching up to me again, and I noticed if it was even slightly warm, my pace suffered a lot. While I have always felt a boost from the cooler temps, the effect was so much more pronounced this year. On days where it was warm, my pace suffered greatly, my HR would get high quickly, and I was struggling to breathe. Then, for several days afterwards I would feel very fatigued from the effort. My current way of training doesn’t seem sustainable for me anymore.
I have always resisted run walk intervals because I found the constant stopping and starting kind of annoying. It’s easier to get into a flow state with continuous running. I have used intervals (0.5 mile) when I was injured as a way to do longer distances with less stress on the injury but I haven’t tried the shorter, more conventional walk run intervals. When I race with my friend, we usually use her intervals, which are about 4 min run/45 sec walk. I haven’t found the stopping and starting as annoying, maybe because she does a good job of transitioning from one to the other. IDK. Whatever it is, I feel much less fatigued following those races than I have been following my long runs lately. So, I think it’s time to give walk run intervals a shot.
I spent some time the last couple of days looking around on the internet, mostly Jeff Galloway, to see where I should start. He recommends a 3 min run/30 sec walk for a target pace of 9:00 mile, which is what I would need for a sub 2 hr HM. I tried it today, knowing my legs weren’t ready to be anywhere close to fast enough to get down to a 9:00 mile, but wanting to see how it felt to run faster than my usual easy pace on tired legs and whether the walk intervals would be enough time to allow recovery. It worked out ok. It was a tad warmer today, which is always a factor and my legs are still tired, but I was able to comfortably run a pretty decent pace and not feel tired afterwards. It was only 3 miles but my post-workout fatigue has been pretty serious lately so I take that as a victory.
Jeff Galloway’s training plans don’t look like they will be a good fit for me. In general, they combine really long weekend runs with only 2-3 days during the week of much, much shorter runs. That doesn’t align with any of the other training plans I’ve ever seen. Most have a progressive long run on the weekend, but nothing like a 17 mile run on a HM plan. Also, most plans tend to have more mid range runs during the week with maybe one short run in there somewhere. His plans seem to rely too heavily on the long run for building fitness. I would rather run more days of the week than do one mega long run. So, to that end, I’m going to combine parts of a few different running plans. I have previously used a “just finish” HM plan from Hanson‘s for base building, and I think those mileage parameters might work as a trial for my run walk method. On Jeff Galloway’s site he has a plan for people with a time goal that includes some speed work. So I’m thinking of pulling the speed workout off of that plan and replacing one of the midweek runs in the Hanson‘s plan, which does not include any pace specific guidelines.
Over the next month I will see how much mileage I can do without feeling wiped out and make some adjustments as needed. I want to keep up the speed workouts so I can give a good effort in SC and see what my HM time ends up being.