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Comments: It was exciting to be among that kind of crowd - one of the biggest so far - 10 000+ runners. I picked my place in the crowd really good, didn't need to pass and wasn't passed too much. Tried to keep the pace down, and HR not more than 150 for the first 10 minutes. The human traffic was huge, but well spread out on closed to the cars streets. Very scenic route along the lake, then meandering into the park and back on the lakefront. Miles went by quickly in the beginning, carried my bottle w/ Gatorade and was sippin from it all the time and did not need to stop at the stations plus sipping it never leaves me with too much water in the stomach. Around mile 7 had to refill my bottle w/ water - now it was time to eat a GU (my favourite gel) and some salt beans, so from now on - water only. Well, the moment I opened that GU the bloody bee started sniffing some food and literally for the rest of the race that thing was following me and I had to occasionally fight it off. The fact that I wanted to be enviromentally friendly and put the used wrapper back in my race belt didn't help. Eventually we became friends... Gradually sun was up and it got kind of hot, tried to run on the shady side of the highway. Did not walk at all till mile 10, not that I couldn't run, but yesterday I was reading Jeff Galloways' run/walk strategy and this put the bias on walking "early" a bit. So the last 3 miles were a bit hard, fatigue set in and I mixed the run with walking a bit. Finally the FINISH line - yes! I was expecting 2:15:00, but I'm still happy with the result (I lack motivation to push myself more). What would you do differently?: Next time I will try Jeff Galloways' run/walk shuffle strategy - according to him it improves time - will see.  Post race
Warm down: The volunteers took the chip off and slowly proceeded to the exit. Called my brother and when I found him and my wife, we slowly walked back to the car. There were too many people to enjoy the post race scene... What limited your ability to perform faster: Lack of specific speed focussed training, poor motivation to go faster, maybe genetics... Event comments: Great race, the only bad part was finding parking space, really... Profile Album Last updated: 2007-08-01 12:00 AM
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United States
Chicago Half Marathon
75F / 24C
Sunny
Overall Rank = 5951/10118
Age Group = 45-49
Age Group Rank = 312/428
Had surprisingly good sleep, got up at 5:30, ate piece of bread w/tahini and cottage cheese, had 1 cup of coffee, shower, get dressed - the usual.
Went to the race w/ my brother and my wife (sweetheart. My brother is driving and 30 min before the start we are trying to find a place to park -right... After driving around for a while finally we're succesful and we're on the way to the race. About a mile! When we got there - there were 13 000 runners ready to go and, what appeared like a million spectators! Surreal sight. Drank some Gatorads prepared earlier and joined the waiting crowd.
No time for any warmup other than walking to the race, no stretching, nada - no time for it, I figured, I will go really slow for the first 10 min or so to warm up.