Skip to main content

Chicago 13.1 (half) Marathon

Saturday morning, Brynn and I woke up at 4:30 to get ready for the Chicago 13.1 Marathon half marathon. (sidenote: as I mentioned in my Newcity review that "13.1 Marathon" title is a clever bit of misdirection - obviously you could argue that it's just the title of the race series, but to me it seems to give the impression that this is a "marathon" rather than an event that includes a half marathon and a 5K.)

We got to Millennium Park around 5:20 and got in line with the rest of the runners heading south. It was a lengthy line, stretching down Michigan for a while, but volunteers were loading us on buses pretty quickly and we were heading south by 5:40.

 
Once we got to the South Shore Cultural Center we headed over to the VIP area and checked in. What was especially sweet about this VIP tent was that it was located right at the finish line, which made it super easy to get to after finishing and gave us a direct view of the finish line.



We went and met up with a big group of Chicago Running Bloggers near the gear check. It was really cool to meet these runners in person since I've read most of their blogs. Check out the picture.  Not sure if you'll be able to tell which one is me... (hint - I'm the one that's not a female). I also saw both Maggie and Ginger Foxx on the course which was cool - I've been running a lot this year but don't always get to see familiar faces on the course. I also saw Brynn pretty close behind me after I made the turnaround which was exciting. Did anyone else think that turnaround was a little anticlimactic? At one point you were running north, and then there was a mister, a guy on a chair reading a magazine and a cone and you realized you should start running south. Otherwise I thought the rest of the course was great. And the post-race party was super-fun. Beer in the morning? Yes.

It was hot out there and I'm pretty sure I couldn't have gone much farther than a half marathon, but it felt like a perfect distance on Saturday morning, even with the heat (all the water stations, wet towels and ice cubes definitely helped). But the best part was getting to run with Brynn and hang out afterwards!
I do wish they would have had more American flags at the finish line





This was the first year that Allstate Life Insurance sponsored the race and I thought they did a great job - there was a ton of support and they made getting to and from the South Shore Cultural Center very simple - a big accomplishment for so many runners. Looking forward to this one next year (thought maybe it could be a little cooler...)
Labels:

Comments

  1. Ginger FoxxxJune 11, 2012 at 10:58 AM

    Great job both of you! I seriously almost tumbled into the guy at the turn-around, because i did not see it coming until it happened. Thats mostly my fault though, i was not paying attention and was too busy chasing butterflies, stopping to pet dogs, and other shenanigans. I never even noticed how many flags there were, haha

    ReplyDelete
  2. The JudgeJune 11, 2012 at 1:34 PM

    Yeah I almost ran into him too! That would have been my excuse if I had run into him: "You came out of nowhere man!"

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJune 13, 2012 at 9:29 PM

    It was fun to meet everyone! I'm glad we had at least one guy at our meet-up! I agree the turn around was pretty unexpected, especially since with all of the runners in front of you, you don't really see it until you are there.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chicagoland's First Annual February Fool's Goal Half Marathon/Debacle

A few weeks ago I was looking through the race listings for the month of February and noticed that there are three different races this coming Sunday. All in different cities. As I was trying to decide which one to run I realized that they're all taking place at different times... and then I started thinking... Why not just run all three? I talked to my running homey Antonio and after some discussion about logistics, we realized that based on the timing and location of the races, this would be an insane dash from Chicago to Highland Park to Hoffman Estates to Channahon and back to Chicago, with just enough time to park, get our bibs, run the races and (after carefully stretching, of course) head off to the next one. That's also when we noticed that by a pretty sweet coincidence, the three races just happen to add up to a half marathon.  So, obviously we decided that it had to be done. We registered for all three and created a new race: Chicagoland's First A
12 comments
Read more

Warrior Dash or It's Not Always About Speed

My parents were in town this weekend from Texas. We rented an I-GO (actually, even better than that, I won the WEGO 10 monthly competition for 10 free hours with an I-GO, which was very sweet) and drove out to Channahon, Illinois for the Warrior Dash . This was my first "mud run" and I was pretty excited about it, because I've been creating an image of the mud run in my mind as a pseudo-hardcore fun run. I would say that I still feel that after running it, but I think now I see it as intentionally not hardcore. They're asking people to have fun, not to kill themselves. My full review is up at Newcity - I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected, but most of that was just based on seeing it in a different way. This isn't really a run for runners. It's a run that tricks non-runners into thinking running is fun. More on that later (like several weeks from now later, not like later in this blog post). Anyway, I ran with Brynn, and we made sur
6 comments
Read more

Top 7 Chicago Race Shirts (and a Hat) of 2012

Remember when race shirts were pretty much guaranteed to be over-sized white cotton, seemingly designed so that you could wear them once (if you really wanted to show that you ran the race) and then probably never again? One side had the race logo and the other had about 20 sponsors. And the long-sleeve ones had little cuffs at the wrists to make sure you got that nice puffed sleeve look that no one has ever asked for. These days it seems like almost every race is giving out running shirts rather than old-school cotton, and mostly I'm thankful for this change because it seems like they spend more time picking an appropriate color and working on a legitimate design rather than just slapping their logo onto some cotton for you (although I did get a few race shirts this year that went with that style... surprisingly enough, those shirts aren't in my closet anymore). Anyway, pretty much every race includes a shirt. Some are awesome, some are terrible and some are just... shirt
12 comments
Read more