We had been maintaining our training throughout the summer but throw in a vacation/planning and some summer colds in there, we were not as prepared as we hoped to be. I (Christie) had been picking up the pace on the treadmill in recent weeks and even ran a full 5k on the track the Thursday prior to the race so I was feeling good. Gary has been battling a pesky sore throat/cold for awhile so couple that with a busy summer work schedule, his training had been less than stellar too. Either way, we were running it!
Saturday we (Gary, Angela, Alex and I) headed to Navy Pier to pick up our runners packets which contained our official bibs and t-shirts. The cool thing about this race was that they printed our names out on the bibs…. well all but Alex. We checked out the expo for a bit, ate some lunch and headed back to SoHo. We packed in a carb filled dinner of spaghetti and garlic bread and headed to bed early.
The alarm went off at 5am. Surprisingly, we got up with a bit of ease that morning. The girls stayed sleeping (but grandpa hit up the couch when we left to keep an ear out for their “I need go potty, mommy” cries), we ate a light breakfast and headed out the door at 5:45am in full running gear with Ryan as our chaperon. We made into downtown around 6:30am, got shooed out of the parking lot and hit up the meter knowing that when we left, the crazy lady from Walgreens wouldn’t have our car towed. We headed toward the starting line through neighborhoods and parks, following the loud speakers and music. As we walked, we gathered more people until we arrived at home base to find around 20,000 runners along with their fans getting ready to put all their training to the test.
While the 18,000+ half marathon runners (13.1 miles, people….) lined up to be herded through the starting line, we hit up the blue boxed bathrooms, checked in our bag of goods and started to get stretched out. There was such an energy in the air, the temperature was perfect and the sun made it a touch warmer. We chatted, admired and wondered how we’d do compared to others around us.
We lined up all together as there wasn’t a breakdown of mile times (6 minutes miles, 7 minute miles, etc). Soon there after, we started moving forward. Alex jarted around most of the pack, Gary and Angela split and ran closely in their minutes and I found a couple girls to pace myself with. I had a goal of obviously finishing (as I hadn’t trained as much as I did for the 5/3 run) but an unspoken goal of not stopping. I was quite confident that I’d beat my 5/3 time by a few minutes and was feeling really good about how well I was running. It was a nice run through the neighborhoods, along Lake Shore Drive and I was passing people. In the end, Alex finished in just over 25 minutes and place 90th out of almost 1400, Angela did really well herself and ran it in her record time of 29 minutes, Gary didn’t quite make his goal of under 30 minutes but with being sick, he did it in 31:16 and I finished 3 seconds slower that my first time. Ugh. But really, it was awesome that I never stopped and I pushed myself the last 1/4 mile. We all had a great time, loved the experience and are planning on doing more next year together!
Pics from the official photographers (our own will come this week hopefully):