Rock & Roll Las Vegas backlash

Well folks... It's another poorly managed Competitor Group road race. The RnR series is a ripoff on so many levels it's not funny. My advice to Zappo's: save reputation and sever your sponsorship deal ASAP.

Ecin wrote:

http://www.facebook.com/RnRLasVegas

Quite a bit of backlash on their Facebook page. I'm a little surprised based on who I thought registered for these events.

Yeah, I also thought that even a poorly run event would pass with the penguins without much fuss. Apparently RnR thought the same too, and were sorely mistaken.

The fact is that 90% of RnR employees, everyone but the marketing department basically, sucks at their jobs and deserve to be fired. If I performed that badly at my job, I'd be fired for sure.

Okay, no I wouldn't, but most people would.

The 2:04 half guy complaining about the "fatties" getting in his way is pretty funny.

The woman that essentially calls herself an elite for being a sub 2 hour half kind of killed me.

vegasdried wrote:

The woman that essentially calls herself an elite for being a sub 2 hour half kind of killed me.

haha. Didn't see that one. Classic.

I feel sorry for the woman who hit the aid stations that were almost out of cydermax.

Sounds like the perfect race for Kip Litton to cheat at. Lack of or no finish line photos, night time, poorly lit, hell he could have cheated his way to a PR!

so, what was the story with the elite guys? were they seriously hampered by throngs of walkers?

I'm glad you alerted me to this problem in Vegas because I'm doing Miami Beach rock and roll on Dec. 11th. Maybe I'll bring my own water!

The half went off 1.5 hours after the marathon start, and the race merged at the half way point. So anyone running a sub 1:30 first half would have been fine, and were actually more likely to impede the half runners. But being a RNR race the field is so light at the front that wasn't an issue.

No problems near the front of the race - no walkers in our way, no issues with marathoners....mile markers were there (although I missed the one and nine mile markers). Clocks at more than half of the mile markers (but not all of them); markers seem accurate. Everyone went out crazy fast but the 5K split seemed accurate in terms of distance. A lot of people crashed because of the fast first few miles.....my Garmin said 13.17 for the total distance, which seems right on.

Water stations not manned. I heard people were getting food poisioning from aide station workers dipping cups into tubs with their hands and no gloves on(great job). Poor start for anyone after 1:30 corral. The house always wins in Vegas!

also surprised wrote:

The fact is that 90% of RnR employees, everyone but the marketing department basically, sucks at their jobs

Right. They got lucky though having expanded their series during a running boom as never (?) seen before. You can organize awful races and still have year on year growth. It's insane. They could start a "2012 New York City Rock'n'Roll Sunset Marathon" and the race would sell out, no matter what the limit or reg fee would be.

Thanks Oprah.

I had some friends who ran it and said the organization was atrocious, probably the worst ever. It was a R&R marathon... in Vegas no less. I say they got what they deserved.

I have far more tolerance for slow runners than most people on letsrun, but I watched the thing on the local Vegas station that was available online, and it depressed the hell out of me. It made me wonder what our "sport" has come to. Honestly, 45 minutes after the half began, there were still people walking over the STARTING line.

I ran the race in a very average time. I was in the first corral and there were people with bib numbers in the 20 and 30 THOUSANDS who snuck in there so they could be up front. The start wasn't bad but there were way too many walkers...I don't mind slow runners but the above post is an understatement - when i hit about a mile to go, there were THOUSANDS of people not quite at the mile mark and they were CASUALLY walking - not jogging or power walking.

When did this SPORT become a free-for-all? My guess is when people starting asking "have you ever DONE a marathon" or "how many halves have you done" NOT have you ever RUN a marathon. And Boston and NY are now making their standards harder to get into UP FRONT but NY will let anyone in who raises X amount of money, even if it takes you 12 hours to finish?!?

Oh and PS: the RnR/Competitor Group did NOT plan this race well by ANY MEANS

Not only are the entry fees ridiculous, they charged $40 extra for the special privilige of race day packet pick up. Initially limited to 1000 people, it quickly sold out. We tried to pick up a friend's packet that was coming in late on Saturday with a signed waiver and copy of his driver's license. Nope. But guess what? They were re-opening the race day packet pickup for $40. Cha-ching! And another friend (who won his age group) told his mother not to bother tracking him, because there was a $2 charge for tracking. Cha-ching! Disgusting.

My experience was exactly the same at RnR San Antonio. I started in Corral 1, but I only learned on race day that Corral 1 wasn't the "elite" corral. I'll admit that I completely bombed that last half in the heat, but I'm not sure why my 2:40 seed time didn't get me ahead of Corral 1 when my actual (much slower) finishing time got me top 15 (there were more than 100 people lined up in the "elite" area). This wouldn't be a problem except that they moved all the the Corrals up to the line 15 minutes before the start making it impossible to do strides or even move. There were also people with numbers in the 20,000s lined up next to me wearing headphones and Nike Shox.

The race was an absolute mess when the half and full courses merged at miles 11 and 23. I had to weave may way through hundreds (maybe thousands) of hobby-joggers running 2:30+ for the half marathon and paying no attention to the cones that were supposed to separate the two courses.

There was also a $10 parking fee at the race expo... WTF?

why would you do strides before a marathon???