As most of you know, Nikki talked me into training for a half marathon this summer, which is 13.1 miles. I had seen the advertisements for the Chicago Rock'N'Roll Half marathon back in the spring and it was supposed to be on August 21st and benefitting the American Cancer Society. August 21st is my Dad's birthday, so it felt like it was "meant to be". Once we signed up, they had moved it to August 14th so as not to interfere with the Air & Water show, but the sentiment remained.
So Nikki started training using a friend from high school, Allen, as her coach. She managed to do the training, by herself, through a bout of shingles, jet lag from flying to Korea, an upper respiratory infection, vertigo, and a monsoon (all in Korea), and jet lag home from Korea, not to mention some nagging IT Band injuries and still taking care of a 2 year old. I'm
very proud of her!
I procrastinated starting my training and so I signed up with Chicago Endurance Sports for their training program. I met some really wonderful people. I was in the "white" group, which is the slowest group in the training and they call us the "mighty whites". Condescending? Maybe a little, but I loved my group. I didn't have any major setbacks except for having to train in the most ridiculously hot and humid July that we've seen in ages. All of our longest runs seemed to be on days of 90 degrees and 90% humidity. I did almost pass out once, but my coaches figured out that I just needed to drink more Gatorade on the hot days. Also, I have learned more about electrolytes than I ever wanted to know.
Nikki flew in for the race on Friday and we ate at my favorite Italian restaurant, Annamaria's that night, which was lovely. We spent Saturday trying to be "good", fuel up, and stop being nervous. Nikki was more successful at that than me. The day of the race we got up at 4:20am to get ready and drove downtown (the El doesn't start running until 6:45am, and the race starts at 6:30am). Nikki got to meet my coaches and they gave her a CES "karma koin" and a purple ribbon to put in her hair since it was her first half-marathon. It was a beautiful day for a run, and by beautiful, I mean, upper 60's, overcast, with sporadic rain. After running in awful heat all summer, it was paradise to run in that. I told my coaches that God owed us after all of the heat of summer.
We crossed the start line together and I ran with my pacer for CES, Margaret. I do a run/walk ratio of 4 minutes running and 2 minutes walking, and Nikki does all running. We even out to the same pace because my running is faster than hers, but during the walking she goes ahead of me. Margaret wasn't feeling well, so I left her around Mile 7 and caught up with Nikki not long after. Nikki had a few more adventures than I did which included almost getting taken out by an idiot owner and her beagle and also almost being blown over by a gust of wind that blew away a course roadblock thing. From mile 7, we essentially ran the rest of the race together. We sprinted to the end and crossed the finish line together. Our time was 3 hours, 8 minutes, 30 seconds, which is an average pace of 14:38 minutes/mile, and it was a really great race for us both, I think. Approximately 21,000 people started the race, 15,259 finished the race, and I came in 14,333rd. Considering how much I talk about how slow I am, I was pretty happy with that! The race raised $325,000 for the American Cancer Society!!
I guess that's all, but I just wanted to share our experience with everyone because we had such a great time and, frankly, are pretty proud of ourselves!
Oh, and here is a pretty good approximation of how we felt afterwards:
