Lakefront Discovery Run - Run15k

Started out running with LunaTick in her cheerleader costume. It was both an honor and pleasure to run with a cheerleader to begin this event. However, I did make the mistake of not moving up closer to the starting line. In fact, I did the opposite and started out at the very back of the pack. This set up a bad first mile, but I was able to get back on track for miles 2 & 3 which I ran precisely to plan.

Miles 3-5 were nothing special. At mile 6 I had my best costume encounter. I was in a wooded area along the Oak Leaf trail and I passed the Blues Brothers who were stopped about 10 feet off the trail in the woods. Because there were no leaves on the trees everyone had a picture perfect view of both of them relieving themselves together in true Blues Brothers form. Nice.

Just past mile 7 the course heads southbound through Veterans Park. This area is pretty wide open and the wind was strong out of the SW. It was pretty tough running into that wind until getting up towards Summerfest and making the turn onto Chicago St. Somewhere around mile 8, Scoobysdad & his buddy ran up to me and yelled EEEEAAAAW. That gave me a good push to help hammer through the wind. I finished the race with a strong last 1.3 mile.

Overall, I was happy with this race. My plan was to run 8:50's except for a 9:10 on the uphill mile 3. I felt like I executed that plan pretty well except for that first mile.

I did not realize that this race had no starting mats to record individual start times. Eveyone gets the same start time when the race begins, so the only thing you don't want to do is be in the very back where I was. Had I known this, I would have gone up front where eveyone else was hanging out.

Stood around and chatted for a while, but got cold quickly. Had 7 mini-pretzels, 1 bottle of water and 2 cookies. Walked over to the Ale house and got my entry-fee's worth of Downtown Ales. Mmmmmmmm.


Nuthin.


Badger Strider events are usually pretty bare-bones, but this one really does itself a service by teaming up with the Ale House for a great post-race event.