Living Las Vegas

Real Life in the Shadow of the Strip

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Running in Las Vegas

When I started running, it wasn’t a very common thing to do. If people saw you running, they assumed that you were running from something, maybe the law. Now of course that’s all different. It seems like more people run than don’t run, and they are doing it for the fun of it.

Running in Vegas involves putting on some good running shoes, some comfortable clothing, and hitting the trail to put one foot in front of the other. In that sense, running here is the same as running anywhere. In this lovely desert, though, there are some special considerations.

The biggest of these considerations is that the air is as dry as can be, and I mean that literally – the humidity in Las Vegas is very often just slightly more than zero. When you run, you breathe through your mouth, so every breath pumps water out of your body into the bone-dry air. When you combine that effect with prodigious sweating, you can see why dehydration is a real problem for runners in Las Vegas. I read a couple of years ago about people over-hydrating during marathons; those folks actually gained weight while running 26.2 miles. They were not running in Las Vegas. If you run in the Mojave Desert, be prepared to drink lots of water and lots of Gatorade or something like it. How much you should drink depends on your weight as well as how hot it is, but it is almost impossible to drink too much. If you’re from a cooler, wetter climate, plan to drink twice what you’ve been drinking, as a starting point.

But isn’t it hot in Las Vegas as well, you ask? Well, not during the Las Vegas Marathon in December. In fact, I felt like I was freezing my bippy off the last time I ran it (life’s just not the same without a bippy, I can tell you). I had forgotten to take my knit gloves, and my fingers were numb by the third mile.

Here’s the lowdown: From October through April, it is not particularly hot in Las Vegas. Highs in the fall and spring are typically in the 80s or lower, and from December through February it is remarkably chilly, with highs in the 50s and freezes common at night in our high desert air. But then there is summer. Not only can it get to 110 degrees as a matter of routine, but in July and August the humidity can rise due to a phenomenon called a “monsoonal wind.” That can mean running in 100-degree-plus temperatures at 30 to 40 percent humidity, which can be brutal if you’re not prepared.

For runners that means that from May Day to the end of September the biggest problem, after water, will be staying cool. You’ll need to wear very good equipment, in the form of shirts, shorts, socks and even shoes made of a material that wicks water off you and cools you with the evaporation. The material is modern polyester, which was a surprise to me when I first encountered it. Unlike cotton, which gets wet and stays that way – making you hot and clammy – polyester can actually keep you cooler than wearing no shirt (or other garment) at all, and it is amazingly lightweight. Add to it some sort of head protection and lots of sunscreen, and you have the very picture of a successful Las Vegas runner.

If you’re a runner considering moving to Las Vegas, rest assured that there are a great many beautiful places to run in Southern Nevada, including the one-and-only Las Vegas Strip. (The Marathon people say that running the Strip is an experience you shouldn’t miss, and I agree, I agree, I agree.) There are also plenty of people to run with. The Las Vegas Track Club maintains an extensive list of races, training runs and organizations involved in running and it links to many others. For the biggest race in town, enter the Zappos.com Las Vegas Marathon, scheduled this year for Dec. 7.