St. Patrick's Day in UT & NV: ShamROCK Your Socks Off 10K, Ricky Martin, & more - 3/17/18

Sean and I went to bed early Friday night in preparation for our race in St. George the next morning. Our sleep wasn't uninterrupted though. We actually set an alarm to wake us up so we could claim free entries to ANOTHER race! We'd just started a 30-day Active Advantage trial for $0.99 again when registering for the Runner's World Half & Festival yesterday, as it always works out cheaper to get and then cancel membership when registering for a race than to pay registration fees. Anyway, Active Advantage gives entries to various races away to members (usually 5 available entries per race so the quickest 5 members to do so can claim a free entry each). Within a day of signing up for Active Advantage this time, I'd received an email stating that free entries to The Super Run in Las Vegas on April 14th would be up for grabs a little later. Accordingly, Sean and I got a little sleep in, woke up, claimed a free Super Run entry each, got registered, and went back to sleep. Lol

-March 17th (St.Patty's!):

I think I was awake by maybe 1:30am or so. Sean was up less than an hour later. We got ourselves fed, dressed, and ready and started the 2 hour drive to St. George, UT for our race: the ShamROCK Your Socks Off 10K!

It's funny, a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea what we'd be doing for St. Patrick's Day this year. When this race popped up on Groupon though, I knew we had a winner, at least for a start-of-day plan! I'd paid about $16.79 per person total (after all discounts, promo codes, and cash back deals I used) to get Sean and me registered. Now here we were!

It was a little before 7am local time, which was 6am Vegas time), when we arrived at:

Ivins City Park
55 Main Street
St. George, UT

There, we picked up our race packets but then found ourselves with A LOT of extra time before the start of the race. The race was one way so shuttles (technically school buses) from the finish line/packet pickup area/lot we were parked in were there to take people up to the start in Snow Canyon. It was still dark and soooo cold outside though that we didn't really want to take a shuttle that early just to stand around and freeze at the start line. Instead, we stayed in the car for awhile as the sun came up, getting some work done and keeping warm, before getting on one of the shuttles.

Snow Canyon was actually really beautiful so, though we still ended up at the start there pretty early and accordingly had to wait in the cold awhile, we were kinda glad we got there with time to enjoy the scenery and snap some pics before starting our run back to town. I was pretty glad I brought some layers to keep on til race start and leave at bag drop as well as gloves to keep on during the race too as I think I might've frozen solid otherwise. :p

We finally got lined up to run and were sent on our way at 9am local time. It was a fast first mile with lots of downhill. The rest of the miles were undulating with more down than up but the ups still really hurt my time and caused other runners to struggle quite a bit also. From my Strava and Facebook posts, here was my brief race recap:

"ShamROCK Your Socks Off 10k in St. George, UT: Despite the overall elevation loss and nice downhill start, the uphill sections were rough for me. I just took it easy most of the way. I felt like I was running at that finish line for ages though! Sean got 1st in his age group, 4th male, 5th overall. My place wasn't quite as impressive but I could've done a lot worse! Besides, I won 1st place for the ladies in the costume contest! Lol More cool prizes and freebies for both of us as well as another little workout done. Not a bad start to the day! Happy St. Patty's Day!!!"

Sean was waiting for me when I finished. We got some post race drinks and food at the finish line, took some pics together, grabbed our jackets (still so cold!), and went to the stage to watch the awards ceremony and other contests they had going on. Between a hula hoop contest, costume contests, raffle, and overall (top 3) and 5-year age group awards (3 deep), we found ourselves leaving with a nice spread of goodies in addition to our cool finishers medals, of course! As for our precise race results, here's how we did:

Me: 50 mins 33 secs / 6.2 miles
Pace: 8:08 mins/mile
Overall: 61/348
Female: 24/224
Female 25-29: 5/26

Sean: 40 mins 29 secs / 6.2 miles
Pace: 6:31 mins/mile
Overall: 5/ 348
Male: 4/ 124
Male 30-34: 1/ 13

Finally done at the race, we went to get some gas at Maverik.

Then we went to St. George Running Center to see what we could do with $110 worth of gift certificates we'd won at the race! Boy, did we get value too! We struggled to find many cheap shoes in our sizes or that we wanted to buy so we wound up saving one of the four gift certificates we'd won for another time, as they have no expiration. With the other 3 ($90 worth of certificates), however, we got 3 pairs of badass Nike running shoes that were on clearance AND WE ONLY PAID $5.68 OUT OF POCKET! What a steal! Seriously, I left feeling like we'd robbed the place. :O No place to go from there but onward with our day's deal-getting.

So on the way back to Vegas, we stopped in Mesquite. First, we had a peek inside Eureka Casino for the first time in a long time but found nothing of interest there. We had some freeplay and card-swiping deals they just give people to lure them in to use across the street at Virgin River Casino though so we went there next. They gave us $12 worth of freeplay. From that, we only got $5.25 to keep but it was free money and entertainment and we didn't spend a dime for it!

Hungry then, we stopped in McDonald's, used a few phone app deals, and paid a total of $3.29+tax for 2 premium burgers and an order of large fries.

Then we stopped in the Casablanca. We didn't really win anything swiping our players cards there this time but we knew you didn't need a room key to access the pool and hot tub so we brought our bathing suits in, got changed, and spent some time relaxing and soaking our legs there before hopping on the freeway back home to Vegas!

At home, we got dressed and ready and brought a little booze with us when heading back out for the night's big event: Ricky Martin! Yesterday, I'd received an email from my credit card company, M Life Rewards, offering me two free tickets to see Ricky Martin here in Vegas. Funny, I've never paid a dime towards annual fees, interest, or anything else on the card - I just got it for free parking perks at MGM locations and now I'm getting free concert tickets too! Not gonna complain. :D So we loaded up and drove to Monte Carlo, where Park Theatre - the concert venue - was located. We sipped our festive beverages then (only a little and LOTS of hours before driving again!) to get the party started and picked our free tickets up a little early there just to be safe. Before heading back to the car though, Sean found a few cents left in slot machine, gambled it, and won $5.88 in free money. The streak continues! Lol

We were DEADDDDDD tired by that point so we went back to the car for a bit and got in a tactical 1.5 or so hour nap before heading into the theater for the concert. Then it was time for Ricky Martin! I've never been a huge Ricky Martin fan in particular but we both had a great time at the show and thought the show was really fun and well done. So much energy and visual stimulation! Helped me with my Spanish a bit too. Haha

On the way home, we took advantage of one last, very appropriate deal: buy one get one free shamrock shakes at McDonald's! We were feeling fat and got large shakes, 2 for $3!

Finally, we made it back home for my highlight of the day: cooking up a huge dinner consisting of roast potatoes, cabbage, corned beef, gravy, booze (Jameson!), and maybe a couple of other bits and devouring it all while watching movies! Itis hit hard and knocked us out shortly after that but I think we'd pretty much made this holiday our bitch. XD

....and when we woke up again we managed to claim YET ANOTHER free race from Active, this time in Socal, less than a week away, and on the day before our Rock 'n' Roll Carlsbad 5000 5k race!

"Vegas" Spartan Sprint in Littlefield, AZ - 3/4/18

This race was once again in the same location in Littlefield, AZ, 1 hour 24 mins from our house in Vegas. The location:

970 East Peppermill Palm Blvd
Littlefield, AZ 86432

Since the race is (perhaps unofficially now?) referred to as Spartan Las Vegas, they ran the event on Pacific time, though the location was technically in Mountain time.

Sean and I started the race with the 8:45am wave, shortly after the elite and age group runners and whatever other specialist groups they had running in the morning had all taken off. It wasn't terribly busy by Spartan race standards at the time but it picked up quite a bit a little later in the day, maybe around midday.

I had zero motivation for this race as we already did the Super here last year and I'm not a big arms person as is. I think Sean and I both did well though despite my laziness. :p In fact, I made it through the twister! It took a toll on my hands but was better than burpees by far! Sean and I both had to do burpees for the spear throw again though. Fortunately, that was the only obstacle we failed. The lake was painfully cold imo this time but it didn't bug Sean. As I approached the finish, I found Sean waiting for me and cheering me on. I was actually taking my time quite a bit at that point as I had no idea I was about a minute or two from the finish line and actually didn't know if I might have a couple more miles to do. (They don't necessarily make a habit of telling you course length before the start of a Spartan race - just that it's AT LEAST a certain number of miles.) Nice surprise to have it over so soon! As for Sean's and my results:

Sean:
Overall: 18/2,609
Gender: 17/1,532
Male 30-34y/o: 5/304

Me:
Overall: 266/2,609
Gender: 37/1,077
Female 25-29y/o: 8/204

Once done, we got showered to the best of our abilities using the icy water hoses Spartan always has set up for us. Then we raided the freebies in the festival area as much as possible before our volunteer shift.

As avid money-savers, we never pay for Spartan races. In fact, Spartan's paid us the last couple of times! To clarify, Spartan offers volunteer shifts which can be completed in exchange for free race entry as well as other free goodies (t-shirts/tech tops, lunch, snacks). A few of these shifts are ALSO paid! When we can, we opt for the paid ones. These past couple of times, that translated to 5 hours of trash clean-up in exchange for $55 each, a free race entry each, lunch and snacks, volunteer shirts, and TONNNNS of freebies we collected during our shift. As for the freebies, no we didn't steal anything; we just rescued buttloads of shoes, clothing, beverages, samples, recyclables, and whatever else was going and took it home! A lot of the stuff was muddy as hell but nothing a water hose and a washing machine couldn't fix. Also, lots of booths simply didn't want to take home all the samples and products they were giving away and selling at the end of the day so they just handed it all over to us, trashed it, or left it behind. Most people were super psyched to have us relieve their burdens. Lol By the end of our shift, our car literally couldn't fit anything else in it. It was full to the brim. Sure, we'd had to do some mini trash-digging but, in addition to all of our standard profits for volunteering, we managed to find clothes, shoes, food, snacks, and much more for ourselves, family members, charity, recycling, online selling, and maybe even yard sale-ing! I'm sure we'd find ourselves a couple hundred dollars richer by the end of it all and feel better for saving the environment a bit as well. :)

To make matters even better, we'd receive another of those awesome Virgin River & Casablanca flyers through the mail LITERALLY the day before the race. What that meant was that we had at least $10 in free play, a free hotel room, free food vouchers, and other freebies up for grabs in Mesquite, NV, minutes away from where we were at the race and on the way towards home. Obviously, we cashed in! We got a free room at Casablanca, got showered there, used all the deals we could manage in both casinos, soaked our legs in the hot tub with quite a few other Spartan runners who were staying at the hotel, used our food vouchers to get a discount on a couple of Chinese meals in the cafe at Casablanca, rewarded our hard day with lots of drinking and movie-watching in our room, and actually wound up breaking about even as far as Mesquite hotel expenses (getting meals, hot tub, room, and all for free) when we gambled our freeplay (literally gambling $0 of our own money)! Not bad, huh? Only hard part was waking up the next morning to drive home and sort all the free stuff we'd acquired!