24 - Suika Run Club @ the Las Vegas Rock n Roll Half Marathon/10k

On February 25th, I ran the Las Vegas Rock n Roll Half Marathon! This was my third consecutive year running this race, and it was made extra special since I got to run with a group of friends we dubbed the Suika Run Club. 

In this post:

• Highlighting Suika Run Club
• My own race report

Suika, ASSEMBLEEEEE!

Several months before the race, I started teasing the idea of running it with a few friends, and one-by-one they warmed up to it. Soon enough we had 8 people committed to training for the race! The name comes from Suika Game on Nintendo Switch that we all connected over. It also gave us a nice backdrop to use as our Strava club banner! I wanted the group to be more an “us” thing, so I didn’t want to impose the Nico Run Club label on it. 

This wasn’t the first time I gathered a group of friends to train and race. In 2020, I organized a “Covid-19 Half Marathon” where we ran laps on the track at UCLA’s Drake Stadium. In 2021, I put together another group to run laps around Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley, CA for our “Run Punch Man Marathon / Half Marathon” (name inspired by the anime One Punch Man). And in 2023, I rallied a couple coworker friends to run the San Diego Beach & Bay Half Marathon. Organizing these events in the early covid times helped satisfy my urge to race at a time when public race events were canceled indefinitely. More than that, it gave me my first reps at building little communities and introducing people to running, setting goals, and training toward them.

So Suika Run Club was a good bit of the same! But it felt more legit and fleshed out than the previous run club iterations. For one, we were training for an actual race event rather than planning to run laps on a weekend morning at some local park. We also stayed connected virtually through a Strava Club. Over the 10 weeks leading up to the race, we used the Strava Club to tally our runs, give each other kudos and encouragement, and share our training experiences. I also used the Club page to share some training tips and answer people’s training questions.

Getting the Club to race weekend was the culmination of everyone’s training and of a hopeful vision I held in my head for that 10 weeks leading up. We all met in Vegas and set up base at my mom’s house (thank u so much, Mom!). Aside from the runners, we also had a couple close friends drive in to support! Lydia and Ken had been training to race but dropped out due to injury and work-life changes that made training difficult. Tati and Alex have been some of my very best friends and loyal supporters for many of my races, and they made the trip out now to support this group. 

We had pretty much all the things I’d imagine for a run club’s race weekend: a shakeout run, bagel breakfast, some local sightseeing, spaghetti dinner carb-load, hot tub laughs, and a cheer station near the finish line! Seeing all of this culminate on race day was just a beautiful experience and actually was pretty new for me. On my own, I don’t train with any local group or run club, so knowing this Club was out there racing and cheering brought me a new race experience.

Our runners KILLED it, and our cheer station carried each of us across the line. Vicki and Anya ran their first half in great condition, Yifan ran his first 10k, Yemin got a 10k PR dropping a few mins from her prev 2021 time, Isaiah beat his half marathon goal, and I came out with a nice lil PR :) 

My Race Report

This was my third time running this race. It’s my hometown race, and it’s super cool because it actually takes place ON the Las Vegas Strip. It’s an evening race that starts before sundown, so as you run, you’ll see the sun set and the Strip light up. Since it takes place at the end of February, conditions are usually pretty fair; the past three years have measured 63, 51, and 65° F. The sun setting also means that it gets progressively cooler as you run. My only minor gripe with the weather is that the dryness is noticeable. Humidity at this race has ranged from 9-37%, while I’m usually running around 70% humidity in LA. As a heavy mouth-breather when I race, I definitely notice my throat and mouth getting uncomfortably dry even soon after sipping water from aid stations. 

Goals and Training

This race has never been an “A” race in my race calendar. It’s not one I ever specifically train for, but it’s spaced distantly enough after CIM (my yearly “A” race) and early enough in the year to motivate my training when the calendar flips new year. It’s also a fun excuse to visit home and get quality running in. For this year, my intent going in was the same: execute it well and get a current measure of my fitness. 

Because I wasn’t training specifically for this race, I wouldn’t say that my training leading up to the event resembles a typical or ideal progression. The Strava chart below reflects my break post-CIM and then some progressive mileage increases to build my base fitness. My ideal is to maintain around 50-60 miles per week, and I peaked at 60.4 miles the week before race week.

Longer long runs are necessarily built into the mileage increases, so I managed to log 9 runs longer than 13 miles before the race! You’ll notice from the snippet of my training log that the first 5 of these were run at an easy effort, and the remaining 4 were run as “quality” sessions with speed work built in. I used these speed workouts to feel out what half marathon pace should feel like. In addition to the running, I was keeping up with my post-run yoga and strength maintenance. I also developed a strength training regimen for myself to support the running. More on that in my next post!

The Race Itself

On race day the Suika runners got to the Strip around 3pm for the 4:30pm race start. Only Isaiah and I shared the same corral group, so we all wished each other a good race before Isaiah and I got herded to our corral. The start area changed this year, and the corrals were designed only to hold the runners before the start, meaning that there wasn’t much space to warm up. For marathons I’ll get in at least a mile of light jogging and stretching before the race. For this race we only managed to jog in tight circles within the corral before crossing the barrier into the adjacent road to get a few higher speed strides in. 

Isaiah and I agreed to run side-by-side for the first mile at around 7:30/mi pace, and we clocked that first mile 7:25. He would then try to hold that pace for the remainder, while I would go ahead and settle into my own pace. From my recent training, I decided that would be around 7:07 per mile. 

The course takes place entirely on Las Vegas Blvd. It covers the length of the Strip and doubles back on itself twice. I knew that mile 2 to mile 9 would be slightly downhill (the y-axis on the elevation chart below exaggerates the elevation changes) with the final 4 miles being the returning leg slightly uphill. Through the length of the race, my goal was to hold the same effort. Pace, then, would depend largely on accumulated fatigue and the grade. The uphill leg being in the later part of the race was doubly punishing since there would be both factors at work against me. You can see how that manifested in my pace progression below. Still, I feel I largely succeeded in keeping my effort consistent. 

The dryness and warmer-than-ideal temperature were also taking their toll on me, so I made sure to get both electrolytes and water at each aid station. There were several times I grabbed three cups at a single aid station. The stations all had electrolyte drinks offered toward the front half of the station with water at the latter half. I would grab the electrolyte drink at the start of the aid station, sip, grab a water cup mid-station, sip, and finally grab my second water cup to pour down my front torso, back, and head. That helped me keep cool and more hydrated.

I think the art of racing is in being able to maintain balance on a delicate seesaw, where one side has you running relatively easier such that you’re not racing to your fullest potential and “leaving it all out on the course” while the other side has you running so hard that you exhaust yourself before the end of the race. It’s a really fine line between the two. My approach to maintaining this delicate balance is constant self-checks of “how am I feeling? How’s my breathing? How’s my form?”. I do that maybe hundreds of times. If I can manage that well for about an hour and a half, I’ll be across the finish line confident that I did leave it all out on the course. 

I remember my early thoughts in the race were micro-frustrations at the conditions. It’s slightly warm, it’s dry, my mouth and throat are dry. The aid stations were regular enough that those concerns were at least temporarily pacified. Within mile 2, I recognized @deadskout from Instagram from behind and that perked me up to speed up a bit to catch up to him. (side note: you should check him out and his alternate persona @iambearsun on instagram. He runs in his deadskout fit—all black, long sleeves and pants, motorcycle helmet, with no exposed skin or indication of his actual identity—to promote mental health awareness. He’s run across the US once as bearsun and again as deadskout.) We exchanged a few words and took a quick pic before I adjusted back down to my intended pace. 

Beyond mile 9 was a grind. I teeter tottered between wishing to slow down and walk and willing myself to hold the effort. The landmarks on the Strip I used to visually gauge my distance to the finish couldn’t come soon enough. I’d verbally self-coach: come on, you got this, let’s go let’s go let’s go. When I’d see others who looked like they were struggling, I’d throw out the same message to them. Sometimes that gets a “thanks man!” and that always gives me a boost. 

I struggled and pushed and struggled and struggled. After enough of that, I finally spotted the Suika Run Club cheer station just before the mile 13 marker. Just the mere visual of them was the most uplifting thing. It was instantaneously euphoric. Like that single feeling makes it all worth it. For that moment it’s like “THIS is what makes life worth living.” I physically felt myself perk up; my back straightened and then ALL the muscles were firing. You know those speed-up strips in Mario Kart? This is the closest real-life equivalent to that. I was SO FAST. My vision tunneled and the peripheries blurred. I felt, SO FAST. Faster than ever before. I don’t think I could ever replicate that speed and feeling in training. It can only be in a race and with a cheer squad like the Suikas. 

I crossed the line, grabbed my medal, and paused on the side, reaching to reclaim my breath between coughs. A couple of familiar runners came up from behind and congratulated me on my kick. I say familiar because in a race you’ll tend to settle into a crowd running a similar pace, so you start to get familiar with the faces around you. I sat tight in the finish area for a few minutes to wait for Isaiah before we made our way to the cheer station to cheer our other runners through the line. 

Closing

I clocked a finish time of 1:34:29 (7:13/mi pace) PR, down from my previous PR of 1:36:00 from the Santa Clarita Half and my 2023 LV Half Marathon time of 1:36:10. I’m very pleased with this, and I feel so fortunate that I’ve gotten to gradually improve at this race distance. 

Looking not too far forward, I’m reorienting my training to prep for the Everest Marathon on May 29th. I’ll detail this more in a later blog post, but the quick and dirty is that it’s a trail marathon that starts from Everest Base Camp at ~17,600 ft elevation and descends to a finish at Namche Bazaar at ~11,300 ft elevation. That means training more with trail runs, hikes, and higher elevation efforts! I trekked to Everest Base Camp two years ago and absolutely loved it. I also learned about the Everest Marathon then, but I didn’t think I’d be returning so soon. I’m HYPED