Las Vegas Marathon medals depict glitz of city
For some runners, the prize at the end of the race has become an integral part of the experience — there’s always a new, shiny medal to claim.
Susan Barnes, who traveled from Maryland for the Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon this weekend, once switched her registration from a race in Richmond, Virginia, to one in Baltimore because it had a more unique medal — one depicting a crab.
Like Barnes, many others collect and display their finishing medals, which is why the Rock ‘n’ Roll Series puts a heavy emphasis in creating a medal representative of each city. For this weekend’s races, they started the design process nine months ago.
“We know in the running space these days, the medal is a critical piece to the puzzle in terms of why people register for a race, and being Las Vegas and the glitz and glam city that it is and also with 90 percent of people coming from outside of Nevada to run the race, we want to make it something special and something that is going to help people pay for the flight and pay for the hotel and the high race fee in order to run,” said Kevin LaRue, marketing manager for Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas.
Taking in feedback from surveys and notes from past medals, the marketing team, event management team and creative team get involved, submitting designs distinctive to Las Vegas. Last year’s medal had a spinning outline of the Strip. In 2015, there was a slot machine. There have been cards and poker chips as outlines for the medals.
“It’s kind of a reminder. Every medal has a story behind it, and I like to remember those stories,” Las Vegas runner Fabian Hardy said. “I can look at each one of those medals and tell you something about that race.”
This year’s medals, which will be given out to finishers of the 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon, involved three or four designs coming into one, LaRue said. Once the design was picked, it was fine-tuned by the team.
The marathon, half marathon and 10K medals follow a similar design with an outline of the Strip near the bottom, a circular rim with card suits and a dye in the middle of a roulette wheel.
On the dye, the numbers depicted reflect the specific race — twos and sixes to represent 26.2 miles, ones and threes for 13.1 miles and twos and sixes for the 6.2-mile 10K.
The roulette wheel and the dye can be rotated and the size increases with the distance of the race run.
“We put a little bit more money and time into the Vegas medals just because of the size and scale of the race,” LaRue said.
Since the races are run at night, the neon colors on the medals glow in the dark.
The 5K medal has fewer bells and whistles, but is shiny gold with the modified pink and black roulette wheel around the edge.
Runners can participate in the 5K and another race on Sunday (10K, half marathon or marathon) to get a special remix challenge medal, shaped like a guitar.
LaRue said feedback for these medals have been the best of all the medals he’s worked on, with this being the third or fourth time he’s been involved in the process for the Las Vegas prize.
“I think it’s something that’s cool for people who are locals. They can be proud of what the medal looks like,” LaRue said. “It doesn’t look too cheesy, whereas I think it still screams Vegas for the people who this is their big running weekend of the year — or their life — for people who come in from all over the world to come run. I’d say the feedback has been nearly 100 percent positive, and people are really excited to get that medal on Sunday night.”
Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.