Chicago Women's Half Recap

Jen, Nikki and I in the port a potty line

Today started very early. Wake up time 4:00AM...drove to meet up with the other girls running the race. We got parked in the garage, walked to the port a potties with about 15 min to spare. Once we finally came out of the port a potties we had to line up because the race was starting. There were no corrals it was just line up where you want.

I didn't have enough time to get to a pacer so I just took off. I tried to stay with Nikki and Jen as long as I could but it was very crowded back of the pack so as I tried diving through the slower runners I quickly lost them. So I just decided ok it is going to get hot so just run how you feel. This was very difficult. The route was very crowded the first several miles and very hard to pass runners. When I got home I realized I was all over the map. I started super fast but I think maybe this is when my Garmin got confused because we went under wacker. I really was trying to take it easy until after I was at the halfway point.







Once I saw mile 7 and I was feeling good I was trying to try to pick it up but I had to go to the bathroom so that made mile 8 slow. After stopping I wished I hadn't because it was totally mental. I saw some really motivating people as we were making our way back toward Solider Field. Miles 9 and 10 I felt really good and thought I was going to be able to pick it up as I continued but the sun and heat hit me hard. I just couldn't push it any harder. I was frustrated that I had run so much extra according to my watch. So I just wanted to finish. I knew I couldn't finish under 2 hours as I wanted but I knew it was going to be a successfully completed easy race and it was. I didn't want to hurt myself or end up on a stretcher since this was just a race I included as a training run. So 2 hours 1 min and 34 seconds I was across the finish line. I was 583rd place out of over 3400 runners. I was also 108 out of 676 in my age division. This I am very proud of.

After I finished, picked up my post race food and medal I headed back to wait for Nikki and Jen. They both agreed that we were all just glad we did it and didn't get hurt or over heated. I'm glad I did sign up for this because I really had a good time at the race. It was neat to be able to just run with all these women out there fighting just has hard as I was. The post race party was close by so we headed over there and they had free ice cream (this was yum because of the heat). I even got to see my cousin Ed who live in the city at the post race party. Overall I liked the race expect that the course was basically the exact same as the Soldier Field 10 with the 3 miles added. I thought they did a great job preparing for the heat. I do wish they would have had ice at some of the stops. Another half marathon in the books...