Really Big Free Series Half Marathon (Boulder City, Las Vegas, NV)

I first heard about the Really Big Free Series via. the Runners World website. I used this site quite a lot when I ran in the UK for various races. The best part of this race is that it's totally FREE! You have the option of either running the Full or the Half Marathon. 13.1 and 26.2 miles respectively.

After a break from running for a bit and because Aleta had only run one race before (A free marathon on the UK on the Isle of Wight), we decided on the Half Marathon!

The race requires you pay $50 so they get their sponsors on board, then you will be refunded 4-6 weeks afterwards. Providing you START the race...

Pre-Registration

We headed up the Lake Las Vegas the day before the race to pre-register. The queue was HUGE for the Half Marathon, but pretty empty for the full. We decided to register here, rather than on-line, as we left it until the last minute. After waiting for around 20-30mins, we got registered and collected our free T-Shirt as well as some other free goodies! We also found out about The Spartan Race Series here! Something to definitely attempt very soon!

Race Day!

After around 4 hours sleep we headed towards Boulder Beach, just around from Lake Las Vegas. The Marathon started at 6am, the half, 7am! We were outside around 6:40am but the queue to get into the place was HUGE!

The parking cost $10 and was good for 7 days. We parked up and made our way to the start line. The race was delayed around 30 minutes, so we didn't worry about on time in the end! Everyone was released in waves every minute for the next 10-15minutes or so. We left on wave 4-5. The weather was good, and we were ok once we warmed up! We ran until about mile 5 and started jog/running from there. The drinks stations were roughly every 3 miles and had Gatorade and Water.

Both Half and Full marathon take a journey alongside Lake Mead and go back on themselves. Once we got to mile 6, we made it to the turn around point! I decided to wear my Shape-Up's for the race, bad idea! I took them off here and decided to run the rest barefoot on asphalt... It was actually pretty comfortable until the home stretch!

We pushed on and saw some really good sights on the way and took a bunch of pictures! I was really proud of Aleta, especially as she's been sick for some time! We made mini jogging bursts until the home stretch taking a break here and there. When we arrived to the home stretch, the running surface hadn't been flattened very well, and the bare feet were suffering a fair bit! We managed to push on and finished the race in a time of 2 hours 47 minutes!

We were presented with our medals and grabbed some free Water, Bananas and Oranges! Most of the runners then went into the lake to cool the legs and feet off. Really well organised race and I didn't expect the amount of free goodies we received!

Medals!