Skip to main content

Men's Health Urbanathlon

Though I've been running pretty consistently, I haven't run a race since the Chicago Half Marathon last month, so it was kind of refreshing to wake up this morning and head south of Solider Field for The Men's Health Urbanathlon.

I wrote about the course and the weather and the volunteers in my review for Newcity, but there is something that I want to talk about a little bit more: the hilariousness of watching really athletic dudes who clearly spend a lot of time on their physical fitness try to deal with running 11 miles. I'm not making fun of them (maybe a little) but it offered me continuous amusement on the course.

Here's the thing: I know that if I tried to go into some kind of non-running physical challenge I would be crushed, but these bros seemed to think that because they work out their upper body like my homeboy (and fellow runner) Paul Ryan they could speed along this course without any running training. And they did. For a little bit.

But that's not the awesome part.

The awesome part was that just before each obstacle there would suddenly be a wave of dudes who would start sprinting towards the obstacle - they would then just destroy the obstacle. Seriously, these Captain Americas would fly over the hurdles or under the police barricades or across the tires. It was very impressive. BUT... then they would be walking the course (or at least slowly jogging) immediately following the obstacle. Several times I even saw these same Tony Hortons who had just leaped past me on the other end of the obstacles with their hands on their knees bent over.

I have a feeling they read about the obstacles and thought "I can totally do that" and then forgot that they also had to run almost 11 miles to go with it. Or maybe they were just doing the relay and figured that 3 miles wasn't really that much to run anyway.

Anyway, I bet some of those guys probably still beat me because they didn't look like the type that let not training get in their way. Well played sirs. I do still admire you for running this thing.



So here's my results:
Not my best showing (especially Leg 2, which featured the Soldier Field stair section) but I'm pretty happy with it. I do think that the first two miles were marked a bit too short on the course (I had a 6:30 and then a 7 and I didn't feel like I was moving that fast).

Overall, though this was a pretty impressive race that I would definitely want to tackle again. It wasn't quite as hard as I thought it was going to be (which I was thankful for) but it was definitely a challenge. If the obstacles would have been any harder I would have probably been completely drained during the running (as it was I could feel myself losing a good deal of energy after each obstacle). Probably would have been a good idea on my part to train with some obstacles during a run... good plan for next year at least

For the record, the wall at the finish line was the toughest (I even had to give up on my first try and make a second attempt).

Comments

  1. Funny story, I can totally picture the scene. Sometimes a really ripped guy will beat me in a long distance race. Usually they are much younger than me, but still, I think to myself, "what the gives? They have 20 lbs. extra upper body muscle, so I should be beating them." I guess they are just that much fitter than I am.

    ReplyDelete
  2. OMG thank you for the link to that Paul Ryan tumblr. Hilarious. I had to share it with my husband, and then ask him who I should vote for.

    Also, I have a co-worker who maybe runs 3 miles once in awhile, and sort of does crossfit, and he kept saying he wanted to run the marathon just to see if he could, and would totally have bought my husband's bib, but unfortunately, he already had plans to go out of town last weekend. Um. Sure. Yeah. I should have told him about this race.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just to confirm your suspicion, my dear friend neglected to train for the marathon "Because he was in the navy" ....10 years ago.....Needless to say i think he is STILL in bed...

    You have to admire their blind confidence though, right?? There is something charming about someone who thinks they can just up and do a distance race. I mean, we make it look that easy, right??

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, Excellent post. This article is really very interesting and effective. I think it’s must be helpful for us. Thanks for sharing your informative.
    testosterone

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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...

Frozen Gnome 50K (and 10K for the rest of us)

Is this shirt sweet or what? A+ for shirt design This morning I woke up at 5:40, put on several layers of running clothes (tights, shorts, shirt, jacket, socks, waterproof socks, shoes, hat, gloves) and headed out to catch a ride with my friend Matthew to Crystal Lake, Illinois (a city about 75 minutes northwest of Chicago that I had never even heard of until a few weeks ago). We were heading to Veteran Acres Park, a wooded area in Crystal Lake where the McHenry County Ultrarunning Dudes and Dudettes (who call themselves M.U.D.D. for short) were hosting the first annual Frozen Gnome 50K and 10K . Since we're only somewhat crazy runners, we were only tackling the 10K this morning and not going for the entire 30+ miles of trail running. The course promised to be challenging and it was about 25 degrees with a light snow falling, so the closer it got to race time the happier I was to only be running 6.2 miles through the snowy woods, but as we stood around in the heated pavili...