On Saturday, my friend Bethany and I participated in the the Chi Town 10k. I have been running consistently lately, but only 3-4 times a week, and not more than 4 miles at any given time, so I was pretty nervous to do a 10k. I figured I would just take it as a training run, and be happy with whatever happened.
The nicest part about this race is that the start line is only about a 5 minute walk from Beth's house, so there was zero stress in getting to the course. Beth and I run about the same pace, and neither of us were expecting a PR, so we decided to run together. Here is a picture of the course route:
The most hilarious/insane thing happened during the race. After the stretch south along the lake shore, the course goes through a small tunnel that passes under Lake Shore Drive. When we got near the tunnel, there was a person from the race saying, "The course route goes through this tunnel, but there is a water leak, so there is a decent amount of water in the tunnel." Beth and I figured it couldn't be too bad, so we ran to the entrance of the tunnel and we saw that there was about 5 inches of standing water! We decided we did not want to run through that (we were only around the halfway point, so we would have had to run over 3 miles with soaking wet shoes); we looked around and saw a ton of people jumping over the guard rail, and then crossing Lake Shore Drive!! This is a very busy, 8 lane road, and traffic was completely stopped because of all the runners making their way across! We joined everyone else, hopped over the guard rail, crossed one direction of the road, hopped another guard rail, crossed the other direction of the road, and then finally were back on the course. It was insane! I am sure the drivers were not happy (understandably!), but we were not sure what else to do! AND a few minutes later, we heard a guy talking to his friend behind us, and he said, "I went through the water, and it was very smelly...I think it was sewage." :-o That made us extremely glad we hadn't tried to tough it through the water! :)
Overall, my race time of 58:45 was quite a bit slower than last year (I expected to be slower), but we had negative splits for every single mile (except for the whole crossing the road fiasco, but I'm quite sure our pace was where it should be for that mile), so I was actually pretty happy with how it went. I felt strong until around mile 5, then I started to feel exhausted. Beth suggested we try to do a 9:00 mile for the final mile, and I said I couldn't, but ended up doing it! Woo. :) Not bad for what I went into the race expecting. Afterwards we had a delicious breakfast: I drank about 4 cups of coffee and ate an awesome croissant sandwich (wish I had a picture to show you!). I'll leave you with a picture of Beth and I after breakfast.
The nicest part about this race is that the start line is only about a 5 minute walk from Beth's house, so there was zero stress in getting to the course. Beth and I run about the same pace, and neither of us were expecting a PR, so we decided to run together. Here is a picture of the course route:
The most hilarious/insane thing happened during the race. After the stretch south along the lake shore, the course goes through a small tunnel that passes under Lake Shore Drive. When we got near the tunnel, there was a person from the race saying, "The course route goes through this tunnel, but there is a water leak, so there is a decent amount of water in the tunnel." Beth and I figured it couldn't be too bad, so we ran to the entrance of the tunnel and we saw that there was about 5 inches of standing water! We decided we did not want to run through that (we were only around the halfway point, so we would have had to run over 3 miles with soaking wet shoes); we looked around and saw a ton of people jumping over the guard rail, and then crossing Lake Shore Drive!! This is a very busy, 8 lane road, and traffic was completely stopped because of all the runners making their way across! We joined everyone else, hopped over the guard rail, crossed one direction of the road, hopped another guard rail, crossed the other direction of the road, and then finally were back on the course. It was insane! I am sure the drivers were not happy (understandably!), but we were not sure what else to do! AND a few minutes later, we heard a guy talking to his friend behind us, and he said, "I went through the water, and it was very smelly...I think it was sewage." :-o That made us extremely glad we hadn't tried to tough it through the water! :)
Overall, my race time of 58:45 was quite a bit slower than last year (I expected to be slower), but we had negative splits for every single mile (except for the whole crossing the road fiasco, but I'm quite sure our pace was where it should be for that mile), so I was actually pretty happy with how it went. I felt strong until around mile 5, then I started to feel exhausted. Beth suggested we try to do a 9:00 mile for the final mile, and I said I couldn't, but ended up doing it! Woo. :) Not bad for what I went into the race expecting. Afterwards we had a delicious breakfast: I drank about 4 cups of coffee and ate an awesome croissant sandwich (wish I had a picture to show you!). I'll leave you with a picture of Beth and I after breakfast.
I can't believe there was so much standing water in the tunnel! The race organizers should have created an alternate route. Congrats on your race!
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