Finisher's Medal

It finally arrived today...my finisher’s medal from the Las Vegas Rock ‘N Roll Half Marathon!

Some of you might remember that I walked in the Las Vegas ½ Marathon about 6 weeks ago, and that the sponsoring company RAN OUT OF MEDALS!!! Needless to say this was the let down of the event for me. Seriously, how do you run out of medals? Seems pretty simple to me, but if you have 30,000 people registered to participate in the event, you should probably order that number of medals OR less a small percentage to account for those people who registered yet couldn’t participate for one reason or another. Doesn’t seem like rocket science to me.

OK, the medal is pretty cool and worth the wait. It actually glows in the dark!

You can faintly see the moon and stars...pretty cool, huh?!

And in case you’re wondering, no, I am not any kind of competitive athlete. I registered for the ½ earlier in 2011 because it sounded like fun to walk (not run!) the Las Vegas Strip at night.

So for those of you who might be interested in participating in the Las Vegas ½ Marathon, the following are some pros and cons:

1.      It was GREAT to walk The Strip at night and see it in a different way. Although I think this might have been the first and last year for it to be scheduled at night. This event shut The Strip down from about 3 pm until midnight.

2.      This event had over 45,000 participants for the full and the half marathon. That’s a lot of people!

3.     Due to the number of participants, I would highly recommend staying at the hotel/casino that the race begins from. I stayed at a hotel about a mile away, and it took over 2 hours to get back to the hotel once the race was over. (And after walking 13.1 miles who wanted to walk another mile to the hotel?) Side note: I stayed at the ARIA and I highly recommended it!

4.      If you are a marathoner and using this event to qualify for another marathon, this might not be the one for you. The full marathon merges into the half marathon which definitely slowed down the true runners.

If you have other questions about the ½ marathon, please let me know! And if you have other ½ marathons that you recommend, please let me know that too!