Ran my fourth and last half marathon of the year at the Chicago Half Marathon. Really enjoyed this half and had a great run with a PR.
About this race:
- Shortest I had to travel to get to a race start and yet…
- the latest I’ve ever gotten to a race start.
- Awesome course with no cars on either side of Lake Shore Drive.
- Most ridiculously large and heaviest race medal.
Swag
I registered for this race pretty early in the year at the Shamrock Shuffle expo for $82 and also got a bonus tech running vest.
Bought some Clif Shot Bloks at the expo. And also discovered how good Cabot Alpine Cheddar cheese is.
Race
The half marathon had 8,193 finishers and more runners with the 5k. This course was the only race I’ve
done where both the north and south directions of Lake Shore Drive were shut down for the race.
Some of the other races had partial routes along LSD, but generally there were still cars on the road.
It was
neat to see the elites come back down heading south on the other side as we were running up along the
north side. There was really great energy also from all the spectators, especially whatever group was
standing around the 11ish mile mark with noise makers and jumping around.
This was my best half of the year, finishing in 2:17:53, which put me at a 10:32 pace overall.
Compared to the other runners, I was
- Overall: 4,545 of 8,193 (44.5%) (this is a pretty fast race)
- Gender: 2,145 of 4,665 (54.0%)
- Age/gender group: 370 of 833 (55.6%)
- 5 mile split: 51:51 (10:23 min/mi)
- 10 mile split: 1:45:18 (10:32 min/mi)
Afterwards
Had some Connie’s pizza and beer before going out for a big post-PR brunch.
In short
Such a nice race on LSD. Looking forward to hopefully running again next fall.