City Wisdom #4

Even without visual confirmation, you'll know when you get on an L train car that contains or recently contained (within 30 minutes) a homeless person.

City Wisdom #3

Chicagoans, on the whole, are very friendly people.  Just don't ask us for money on the street.

Berbee Derby 10k Race Report

Every Thanksgiving Day in Fitchburg, a race called the Berbee Derby takes place.  This was the first year that we decided to do this race as a family.  My mother and sister ran/walked the 5k and I ran the 10k.  I have to say, it was a pleasant change from the usual "sleep in, engorge ourselves with food while watching football and drinking at 10 AM" schedule.  While the forecast had called for sunny and 55 the night before, what we awoke to was a very different story.  Windy as hell, 35 degrees and overcast.

We arrived at the event about an hour early to score a prime parking spot, but we also realized at this point that there was no place to seek shelter from the cold (besides a tent which was not much better than being outside).  Being that this race is on Thanksgiving, it would have been nice for the race coordinators to organize having the nearby building open for people to stand in while they waited for the race in the event of extremely cold weather/wind.

All that aside, once we started warming up it was a non-issue.  I had my goal set to break 37 minutes, as I had run 38:03 through 10k when I did my 15k a few weeks back.  The course was sort of an "out-and-back" where we would have the wind to our back on the way out, and into our face on the way home.  I wasn't sure if it would be better to try and make up some time on the way out and try and survive on the way back, or hold back a little on the way out and really grind it out on the way home.  I figured I'd just run hard for as long as I could and see where it got me.

I decided to start just off the front, so I wouldn't be tempted to go with the lead guys as I knew a lot of them from high school and knew they would be running significantly faster than me.  One of these days maybe I'll be able to control the adrenaline of the race better than I do now...

...The gun went off and I went out at what I thought, was an easy comfortable pace to start.  I saw the mile 1 clock and I think my jaw dropped.  5:20, 5:21, 5:22... I crossed the actual mile mark at about 5:37.  Shit.  Well, I told myself I may as well try and hold it for as long as possible and build up some time chunks that I could rely on later in the race when I slowed down.  Here's how it went:

Mile 1: 5:37

Mile 2: 11:20 (5:40/mile pace)

Mile 3: 17:00 (5:40/mile pace)

*It should be noted that we turned back into the wind at mile 3

Mile 4: 23:20 (5:50/mile pace)

Mile 5: 29:20 (5:51/mile pace)

Mile 6: 36:00 (6:00/mile pace)

10k Final time: 37:13 (6:00/mile pace)

Age Group Result: 12th / 79

Overall Male Result: 29th/ 997

Overall Result: 30th / 1891

1st place male ran a blazing 33:17 (5:22/mile pace) and the first place female (who I actually ran with until about mile 5) ran an incredible 36:29 (5:53/mile pace). 

As you can see, after about mile 5, I hit the wall pretty hard.  I went from running 6 and sub-6 minute miles to running the last mile in 7:40 (which I'm not sure that I slowed down quite that much, I think some of the mile markers were a little bit unevenly spaced).  However, much of the last mile was uphill, into the wind, which was killer.  This course was much hillier than the 15k course I ran in Chicago, which is to be expected because Chicago is so darn flat.   I was initially disappointed with my age group result until I realized that my age group took up 12 of the top 30 overall spots, 5 of which were in the top 6.  I suppose I can't be too upset because I still don't consider myself to be "in shape" or "trained" for these events as of yet.  Maybe next year!  I was more disappointed to miss my sub-37 minute goal, but will definitely relish in the experience of doing something positive and productive on Thanksgiving.  I was also very happy that my mother and sister had a great experience as well.  We will definitely be doing this race again next year!  I will post pictures soon :)

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Cheers

City Wisdom #2

The bigger they are, the harder they hit.  Right of way is apparently determined by size here in Chicago.  That guy won't be stepping off the curb without looking again!

City Wisdom, Chicago's Life Lessons #1

I'm starting a new segment on my blog that will maybe help me post a little more frequently.  I'm calling it "City Wisdom- Chicago's Life Lessons."  Anytime I have what I consider to be a novel thought or lesson learned, I'll just post it.  These will mostly be short blips of the things I'm learning outside of school.  So without further distraction, let's do this...

Lesson #1
The qualities I look for in a woman include honesty, independence, strongly goal-oriented, physical attractiveness, and most importantly, a family with season Packer tickets.

Hot Chocolate 15k- Chicago's Sweetest Race

Today  I had the pleasure of racing in my first ever true running race since my days of freshman high school track.  The day brought absolute PERFECT conditions!  The temperature when the gun went off was just below 50 degrees and the winds were light and variable.

Now I must confess,  I was not "trained" for this race.  I've been schooling pretty hard as of late, and would estimate in the last month that I have run a total of 50-60 miles.  I ran 10 miles once about 2 weeks ago.  Most the of runs I have gone on have been shorter, faster, "build my speed" kinds of runs.  With that in mind, I set my goal to run 15k in under one hour (6:20/mile pace).

I was fortunate to be placed in the "A" corral, which was in the front of the pack.  The gun went off and the elite took off like bats out of hell.  It's incredible how fast some of those runners are, men and women alike!  The first place male finished in a blazing time of 48:11, and the first female finished in 53:11 (14th overall!).

My strategy was to start out slow, maybe go out on 6:30's or something right around there and then build my tempo through the race.  This strategy is quite contrary to my splits posted below :)

The gun went off and I felt surprisingly good for having just been standing in place for 15 minutes (they loaded us in the starting chute really early).  Luckily for me, there were clocks at every mile marker, which allowed me to confirm my pace with my own watch.  I reached mile one, look at the clock which read 5:50.  My watch said the same thing.  WAY too fast.  Well, I felt good so I just went with it.

5k rolled around at 18:34, I had slowed slightly from my first mile, but was still averaging 5:58 pace.  It was unfortunate that I fell into a gap between two groups.  The one in front of me was running just slightly faster than I was comfortable pushing, so I did most of the work through the first 10k on my own.  I rolled through 10k at 38:03, slowing my pace a bit more from the first 5k, I was averaging 6:07/mile through 6.2 miles.  At this point I started hurting pretty bad.  My legs started feeling heavy and I was cramping a bit in my lower back and abs.  I ran with several different guys for brief periods, but they eventually picked up the pace and left me in the dust.

Running up the finishing chute, my watch was approaching 58 minutes, and my final time ended up being 58:01 (6:14/mile).  I was pretty happy with my effort, finishing well under an hour and running quite a bit faster than I thought I was capable of at this point and with that amount of previous running.  My placing was as follows:

Age Group (20-24): 8th / 340
Overall: 57th / 13,430

Overall, I felt this was an awesome race.  It was very well organized, the volunteers and Chicago Police did an outstanding job catering to the athletes every needs.  I always feel so grateful for the people behind the scenes who make events like this happen- truly amazing!

Post-race I met up with a friend from school, Dave, and his fiance Meredith.  Both of them also ran the 15k and had excellent races as well!  We enjoyed the Ghirardelli Chocolate fondu and hot chocolate tent where we were spoiled with all kinds of chocolate goodies.  Will definitely be racing in this event again next year, and would highly recommend it for anyone looking to run/walk a 15k or 5k in November!

I'm off to Madison to spend some quality time with my mother and father, and may even try and stir up some trouble with running extraordinaire, Travis "T-pain" Pernsteiner.  It should be noted that "T-pain" is not a facetious nickname, but "T-pain" is derived from the fact that when we run together he put the "pain" on me.  Time to catch a train!

Cheers