You know how in life, some days are epic-ly awesome, and other days, you're just trudging through to get to the next day? Well, this race was the latter for me, unfortunately.
It all started with me coming down with a nasty sore throat on Friday night and feeling tired and sick all day Saturday - and then when I showed up at packet pickup at 3:30 pm, I had to stand in a HUGE line outside in the cold for over an hour and 15 minutes to even get inside the Expo tent, where more lines awaited me. This morning, 5:00 am came way too soon, but I pulled myself out of bed, took some DayQuil and got ready. But then Eliana woke up right before I had to leave and she had trouble with the quick transition and was sobbing and crying for me as I left through the front door, and I felt terrible about leaving her. Then as I walked down the street to the Red line I realized that with the scene at the door, I'd forgotten my phone, my chapstick, my credit card/cash and my energy chews - nothing absolutely necessary, but a bummer all the same. Luckily, I did have my CTA card, so I hurried towards the Jarvis stop - only to find that it was closed for construction. I came really, really close to just heading back home, but I am a bit stubborn, so I changed direction and walked to the Howard stop. Of course, the trains were running late, so by the time I finally got down to the start I had to hop a fence to get into my start corral. But I made it, and a nice lady took this picture of me and texted it to my phone at home so I'd have it.
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| Can you tell that I'm feeling tired and sick? :) |
The actual run was crowded, but I liked the course - the south side of the lakefront path is one of my favorite areas in the city, and there was a beautiful view of some of the skyscrapers above the river as we came up onto Wacker from lower Lake Shore Drive just south of the river. I finished the 15 kilometers in 1 hour, 43 minutes and 37 seconds. The Hot Chocolate race is known, of course, for the hot cocoa and fondue that you get at the post-race party, but I was so anxious about getting home to Eliana that I just cut over to the Red line right after I crossed the finish line and skipped the whole post-race party thing.
The bright side (there is always a bright side, right?) was that I actually felt pretty good while running, that I beat my previous time by 2 minutes and 56 seconds (PR!), that Eliana was in a great mood when I got home and we had so much fun playing and watching the Bears game together and that in the evening I enjoyed some Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream to make up for skipping the chocolate treats at the end of the race. All's well that ends well, right?
This afternoon I mailed in my registration for the final race of my Year of Racing Slowly - the Santa Hustle on December 1st! Email or call or message me if you'd like to join me!
