Ben Bruce looks for Rock ’n’ Roll race sweep

An alternate on the 2012 U.S. Olympic team in the steeplechase — a 3,000-meter event featuring 28 hurdles and seven water jumps — Ben Bruce decided to test his mettle in the marathon this year to double his chances to qualify for the 2016 Summer Games.

The San Diego native has aced the 26.2-mile test so far, winning all four Rock ’n’ Roll marathons he has entered — February in New Orleans, June in San Diego, Sept. 28 in Montreal and Oct. 19 in St. Louis.

Bruce, 32, will try to extend his win streak in today’s Rock ’n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon, which starts at 4:30 p.m. on the Strip, adjacent to Mandalay Bay.

“I kind of felt if I could get to St. Louis and win that, then I’d have four and Vegas is one of Rock ’n’ Roll’s biggest events of the year. It’s huge,” he said. “It’s up and down the Strip at night. It’s something different. Most road races are in the morning, so if I can make this my fifth, that would be the icing on the cake. It’s been a long year of racing.”

This will be Bruce’s third marathon in 50 days and 20th race of the year in events ranging from 1.8 to 26.2 miles. For the 12th straight year, he competed in the U.S. Steeplechase Championships in June — 10 days after his son Riley was born and three weeks after he won the San Diego marathon.

“I wanted to keep that streak alive, and as I get older, it’s fun to test your body a little bit different,” he said. “Nobody would think to do a marathon and steeplechase in the same month. I definitely was not at my best in the championships. Most of it was from lack of sleep from having the baby. Tenth is not all that bad, all things considered.”

A two-time All-American in steeplechase at Cal Poly, Bruce has placed as high as second at the U.S. Championships.

He plans to run in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in February 2016 and the U.S. Olympic steeplechase trials in June 2016.

“The main reason for (trying) the marathon was I wanted something new, but if I could make the team in either one, steeplechase or marathon, it would be a dream come true,” he said. “Steeplechase is always the place I thought my best chance would be, but if things go well and I have a great day in the marathon, you never know. It’s two options.”

Bruce, whose wife is pro marathoner Stephanie (Rothstein) Bruce, has run times from 2:21:56 in New Orleans to 2:27:32 in St. Louis.

“Some people, when they make their marathon debut, they go to one of the major marathons — Chicago or New York — but I felt it would be fun to go to some of these races where I felt I had a good chance to win,” he said. “That way, if the race wasn’t going great time-wise, at least if you were in contention to win the race, you had a second thing to focus on.

“It’s been good to go out there and win the races. That’s always fun. And I think I’ve learned a lot just from covering the distance four times.”

Bruce hopes the rush of running under the lights on the Strip will help propel him to victory.

“I’m sure there will be a lot of energy out there,” he said. “The only downside for the marathon is we have about half the course that is north of the Strip, so it will probably get pretty desolate out there.

“But then we’ll get back to the excitement of all the buildings and the lights for the last four or five miles, so hopefully that will give me the push I need to get to the (finish) line.”

The two fastest American marathoners of the year will run in the half-marathon. Meb Keflezighi, who won the Boston Marathon in April in a personal-record time of 2:08:37, will pace the 1:45:00 group in his role as a running ambassador for the Competitor Group, which owns the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon series.

Jeffrey Eggleston finished second in the Gold Coast Marathon in Australia in July with a personal record of 2:10:52. He ran a personal record of 1:03:00 in Japan’s Kagawa Marugame Half Marathon in February and is coming off a wire-to-wire win in the Rock ’n’ Roll Los Angeles Half Marathon on Oct. 26 (1:04:12).

Eggleston, 30, hopes to work together with his Boulder, Colo., training partner Andy Wacker to finish at the front of the half-marathon field of more than 30,000.

“If I finish first, I’ll be happy,” he said. “If I’m second, no problem.”

In keeping with his twice-daily training regimen for the Dec. 7 Fukuoka Marathon in Japan, Eggleston will warm up for today’s race by running an early-morning 10K (6.2 miles).

“I’ll go nice and easy. The afternoon will be the hard run for the day,” he said. “It’s exciting. It’s my first time running down the Strip. It’ll be really interesting, especially with all the lights.”

■ NOTES — The finish line for the marathon and half-marathon is on the Strip, in front of The Mirage. … The Zappos.com ½ of the Half will start at 3:30 p.m. across from Mandalay Bay and finish at downtown’s Container Park. … Macklemore and Ryan Lewis will perform a prerace concert from 3 to 4 p.m. in the MGM Festival Lot, across from Mandalay Bay and the Luxor. Snoop Dogg was originally scheduled to perform but canceled a few weeks ago. … A run-thru wedding ceremony will take place at Monte Carlo’s open-air plaza, located at mile 3 of the marathon, at approximately 5:40 p.m. More than 70 couples are expected to wed or renew their vows. … More than 38,000 runners from all 50 states and 66 countries are registered for today’s races. Females make up 61 percent of the field, and nearly 90 percent of participants are from out of state, filling 88,664 hotel room nights and generating an estimated economic impact of $165 million. … Since 2009, the event has raised $22 million for the Crohn’s &Colitis Foundation of America.

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0354. Follow him on Twitter: @tdewey33.