That's What She Said: Las Vegas Half Marathon

This time traveling blog is warping back to (almost) present day - our excellent trip to Las Vegas for the Rock n' Roll half marathon!

With Elvis!

We cleared out of California just in time to avoid the front edge of the wildfire smoke (too bad it was still there when we got back - but coincidentally, it's finally raining today, yay!).

Quick stop in Baker for lunch at the Greek restaurant, a little shopping at the retro candy store (candy cigarettes, anyone?), and a photo with the world's tallest thermometer. It's so tall you can barely see me and Kip at the base of it:

The bright lights of Crescent Dunes concentrated solar project near Tonopah, always a sight to see:

Roaming around the race expo - we haven't been to a large marathon expo in quite some time, always fun to see what's new; for example:

I think there's a T-shirt version of the list of racer names too, neat idea:

"Eat pasta, run fasta" - which still doesn't explain why the spaghetti is on top of a car...

A very mini triathlon, 1 minute per sport:

Testing our bib chips, yep, our names popped up on the screen, we're in!

Now for some non-race Vegas activities, for example, a bit of blackjack:

New art at the (new to us) Cromwell, which used to be Bill's Gambling Hall - we'd have known this already if urban racing was still doing championships here. As it is, all we can do is reminisce about "the good ole days."

A break from the city on Saturday morning for a hike/run up Frenchman Mountain:

It's a rocky road:

The last stretch up to the antenna towers, through desert strata:

And the payoff - a lovely view of Las Vegas:

With our race entries we also received some "runner's perks" which had some good deals including a discount on the monorail. Plus half-price tickets for the Linq High Roller. Sounds like a great time to try that out once:

Like the London Eye, a slow-moving ferris wheel of orbs:

Enjoying the views:

Hello over there!

Another "new to us" location, the alleyway between the Flamingo and the Linq, with shops that include the Honolulu Cookie Company (yay!) and this obviously-British spot:

It's hard to see in this photo, but the Statue of Liberty is wearing a Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey jersey (a new NHL team as of last year), that's pretty impressive:

Checkpoint!

Duck! (not my best photo of a giant duck, sorry guys):

IHOP! OK, this one requires a bit of explanation - as we were reminiscing, we kept running into locations from the 2002 Urban Challenge finals (Miyabiya, Kimchi, Battista's, Venus de Milo at Caesar's)
http://www.kipley.com/uc/vegaspictures.html

In 2002, this is where we took our big check for a post-race meal and propped it in the window :)

The Pinball Hall of Fame - what an awesome place! We spent some time (and quarters) on the machines, old and new. There are a ton of games here and some folks have obviously dedicated serious time and energy to finding and refurbishing them.

Hey, it's Star Trek TNG! This was my favorite of the games I tried out:

John playing another Star Trek machine, from the original series:

Kip found a game he had played a ton in college, that's so cool:

Highly recommend!

Another recommendation - Penn & Teller's magic show. Simply amazing, funny, hard to describe (and of course I'm not going to tell you anything more).

Before the show we got a chance to see some props from an older show on the stage, including a box with a mirror in it so someone could walk into it and "disappear":

Penn on the upright bass, entertaining us before the start of the show:

The display outside the theater gave a clue to the show's finale (just go see it, it's worth it):

OK, back to the main reason we were in Vegas for the weekend - dressing up as Elvis to run a half marathon! We were "all in" on the fun aspects of the race, so Kip decided to join the "running of the Elvises" as suggested by the organizers:

We were part of this November's "Blue Wave"... at least that's what it said on the back of our bib numbers:

Walking to the monorail, ready to shake, rattle, and roll:

And ready to hand out donuts - too funny:

Viva Las Vegas!

It's not often you catch Kip, I mean Elvis, dancing, much less get it on video...

On our way to the starting corral, entertaining requests for selfies with Elvis:

And official race photos:

Oh yeah, the other thing! The race also offered a "Run Through Wedding", so a bunch of us signed up to renew our vows at mile 4, and a few other couples were actually GETTING MARRIED during the race. I'm guessing including these two:

We hung out with a bunch of our running friends, slowly making our way to the starting line as each "corral" was released every couple minutes. We expected actual corrals, but nope, it was a "you figure it out" affair, quite disorganized (and really the only disorganized aspect that we saw from the race setup). We didn't care, we weren't in a hurry, but other runners were a bit stressed out about it.

We'll get there eventually:

Almost to the starting arch as it's starting to get dark (oh yeah, also, this was a night run on the Strip, quite a unique experience):

And... go! Kip took off with his donuts to continue handing them out on the run. I forgot I was going to walk with John at the beginning and started running too, oops, sorry John. OK, back to the original plan.

Walking did give me time to attempt some photos in the growing darkness. Most didn't come out great, but here's a sense of it. Runners heading back north on the other side of the Strip after a 2-mile out-and-back to the south:

A well-organized water stop, and John taking the less-traveled route behind the tables:

Probably should have turned the flash on for this selfie...good thing this wasn't an urban race at night:

John and his shadow, on our way back toward Mandalay Bay:

We made it to mile 4 just in time for the Run Through Wedding! We had speed-walked 3+ miles, then we had to run the last couple blocks to make it - well, almost in time - we weren't inside the special area with most of the couples, but we didn't care. We renewed our vows from here. Thanks for marrying me, John, I love you!

Lots of creative running/wedding outfits:

Even a royal couple showed up:

That was great fun! And we even had access to the New York, New York bathrooms from there (the porta-potties on the course all had long lines), so we took advantage of that situation:

Back to the streets. We heard someone on the sidelines yell "Is that a banana?" and turned to see a guy running in a large banana costume. The photo didn't really come out, but he's that yellow thing in the middle of the runners:

Enjoying our fast walk up the middle of the Strip, with no traffic for once:

Part of the music portion of the entertainment, an excellent high school band. There were a bunch of great singers and musicians along the course, another reason we wanted to do this race: