Chicago Marathon: Seriously? Did I do this

Well folks, that's right.  I did sign up for the Bank of America Chicago Marathon.  I haven't even completed my first marathon and I've already signed up for my second.  Chicago will probably be a "one and done" for me.  I really don't plan on running it a second time since there are so many other races on my bucket list.  Glad I made it through the sign-up fiasco.  To those of you still waiting for the remaining 15,000 spots...good luck!  I hope you get in.

Speaking of that, I need a place to stay so I don't have to drive that morning from near Wisconsin.  If you've got a place, leave it in the comments...
Thanks

Win A Free Biggest Loser Racine Race Entry from @runningdivamom

So I had been thinking about registering for this race in Racine Wisconsin.  I'm a huge fan of The Biggest Loser TV Show.  I ended up having to catch it on Netflix since I never watched it for the first seasons.  The only season I've watched on TV (DVR) is the current 2013 season. It was a sad day when Netflix lost the rights to stream it.

You can read about how to enter the giveaway here.

2013 North Shore Cupids Love Dash

My Performance:
There are so many things that went well about this race, and perhaps one misstep.  I signed up for this race back in November while I was sidelined for for injury to my Left Iliotibial band causing a painful twinge in my knee.  Hooray for getting early registration price of $30!  At the time I couldn't run a half mile without wincing in pain, but now I have a foam roller, and use it almost every day I've been able to run long distances without any pain in the knee at all.  Since this was a training run for me I wasn't too concerned about my pace or time.  I ended up running the race in 57:33, about 9:18 pace per mile.  Official personal results can be viewed here.

Mile 1: 8:29 (WHOA! Way to fast!) but I get caught up in the excitement
Mile 2: 8:53 Still a bit faster than I know I can maintain
Mile 3: 9:19 This is more like what I was hoping for
Mile 4: 9:12
Mile 5: 10:02 when the hills started kicking my ass (more on these later)
Mile 6: 9:56The Course:
After reading the reviews on a few sites about the previous years regarding this race, I learned that some folks heard that the course was short by a few yards.  Well, it seems like the same thing may have happened again this year.  I'm not too concerned about it to be honest.  I use Nike+ Running app on my phone for pretty much every run, and it's always been very accurate regarding distance and pace feedback.  Today it registered 6.17 miles, a proper 10k conversion is 6.21 miles.  .04 miles is really not that big of a deal to me, but this happening 2 years in a row makes me wonder about the attention to detail.  If you need to change the course a bit, then do it.

I do wish I had realized how many hills were going to be in the last half of the race.  Not sure how I had the impression that it would be a flat course, it seemed like the last few miles of the course was pretty much rolling hills!


I felt they had plenty of traffic directors along the course, including some Highland Park Police officers helping to guide traffic and stop them when needed.  From reviews previous years, this looks like an improvement made this year!  Thanks for listening to those reviews (although they should have been less snarky about it).

Packet Pickup and Race Swag Bag
My last experience with picking up my own packet was with Real Racine Skeleton Skamper Half-marathon.  Much like this race it was very small and I got there early so pickup was an absolute breeze!  Running Right in Highland Park had a spot in their store and only one guy was ahead of me.  I was in and out around 5 minutes.

The pick-up bag looked like a version of the Running Right shopping bag.  Previous purchases there yielded larger shopping bags so this may be a normal bag.  Inside I found a coupon for Krav Maga Illinois coupon for 7 days of free unlimited classes.  Since it's a bit far, I most likely won't attend.  There were some advertisements, wet wipes from North Shore Medical Group and a pretty nice running technical long sleeve shirt.  Not sure why race shirts run small, but I need to start ordering a larger shirt. There was an opportunity to swap sizes, but I forgot my shirt on race day to change it.

Race day photos will be posted to Facebook once available.  I share my photos, if any on this blog.

Week in Training: Jan 26-Feb 1

Another month has come and gone.  As I review my accomplishments for the month of January it comes as no surprise that I've hit a major milestone.  The last major milestone was the completion of my first half marathon in 2:10.  I've finally logged over 500 miles with my last 4.2 mile run.  I never saw this day coming, but I could be happier that it's just 10 months after I picked up running and having 7 weeks off due to an IT band issue at the end of 2012.

My mileage for January 2013 ended at 59.6 miles.  The bitter cold weather is slowing me down a bit so my average pace was around 10/mile.

My long run from Saturday was 8 miles followed by ~4 mile recovery runs later in the week.  I wasn't really motivated and ended up pushing them back to the end of the week.  I'm not sure if it was the cold weather or just the long work hours.

Either way I know I have 9 miles coming up tomorrow and I'm planning on using some Gu Chomps to try and get used to ingesting those to make sure I won't have any stomach issues.  A week from then, I have the North Shore Cupid Dash in Highland Park, IL.  That's a 10k so I'm going to be running an additional 4 miles after the race to keep up with my mileage.  I'm shooting for a sub 60 minute race time.

Lack of Motivation

Lack of motivation. Yesterday and today I got up to go for a run, and voila!  Repeated those steps this morning too.  I went right back to bed.  I'm not proud of it.  I am supposed to run a total of 8 miles between 2 runs, so hopefully I can wake up Wednesday and Friday to do those 4 mile runs. 9 on Saturday. We'll see how this goes.

So Much For The Dumbo Double Dare

Well I had planned on running the dumbo double dare partially to prep for the goofy challenge. When registration started, I received the email the same day and when I looked online to register, it was sold out already.  WOW!!  Congratulations to those who got in to that race.  I'm sure it'll be a ton of fun.  I'm sure the inaugural medals will be absolutely stunning.

In hindsight, it's probably better that I didn't sign up considering airfare would have been a fortune and hotels possibly even worse for that weekend.

Still bummed though that I didn't get in but that's fine, I'm good with it, no, not really, who am I kidding.  If you got in, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the registration process...my eyes are set on the Illinois Marathon in April, and then Goofy Challenge in January 2014. Can't wait!

Week in Training: Jan 19-Jan 25

Well this week sure has been interesting.  The Chicagoland area has had some rather frigid temperatures, which reached sub-zero at least once in the past week.  I started out the week on Saturday meeting up with a co-worked and friend.  He's fit.  He's strong.  He's not a runner.  He hates running.  I've worked out with him once before and felt like I had been whipped through a boot camp.  I was scheduled to run 7 miles but ended up running 6.34 miles. I was originally planning on getting to my 4 mile mark while waiting for Danny to arrive at the Rollins Forest Preserve.  I found myself placed at the agreed meeting spot just up from 3 miles and Danny was in the parking lot.  We stretched out a bit, went on a 3.2 mile run.  For a guy that doesn't run much, he can run pretty quickly.

Running with Danny made me realize two things.  I need a running partner.  I can train faster than I do.    My first three miles were all in the 9:30-9:45 range.  Running with Danny we picked up the pace a bit.  We completed the 3 miles around the 9:00 pace.  We did stop to walk a bit, but I'm positive that's because I'm not used to training that fast, but my body is perfectly capable of it.

This got my ass in gear and got me to finally send in my registration for the Grayslake Running Club.  Back in November I attended a social gathering they put on at Buffalo Wild Wings and met a few people there that seemed like a lot of fun.  Achievement of the week: Registered for GRC.

With the 6+ mile long-run behind me, I delayed my first short run until Wednesday when it should have been Tuesday.  I'm not entirely sure why I ran 4.4 miles at a 10:25 pace but it sure seemed slow.  Not sure if my mind wasn't in the game that day.  The second short run followed the next day (probably not a good idea) but I need to get the mileage in and that was at a much better 9:38/mi. I ran 2 loops of our neighborhood with a few detours and actually had fun, felt a bit like a hamster in a wheel.

So far I've put about 50 miles on my Saucony Pro Guide 5 shoes.  They feel great.  My feet feel well supported.  Winter training for a spring marathon isn't going as badly as I had thought it would.  Even though they're not representative of the entire running community, I'm running more miles at a faster pace than most men my age.