Sorry Katie

I had a question from one of our readers of this fine blog, asking where my next race is.  The half-marathon that I will be running in a few weeks is here in Chicago.  It is a new half-marathon called 13.1 Marathon Chicago.  It is located near the Museum of Science and Industry on the south side of downtown.  It runs along the lake shore and through Jackson Park, home of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. 

Second Race

Tonya and I finished our second race of the season yesterday, and it was a wet one.  Tonya ran in the River Bank Run 5k in Grand Rapids and says she enjoyed it.  She would have liked it more if didn't rain, but the rain at least held off until after she finished.  She finished the race in 32 minutes flat, but wasn't really happy with her time, Tonya didn't really like the hills either.  There weren't many, but training in Chicago, we never really have to run up hills so they got to her enough to slow her down a bit. 

I ran the River Bank Run 25k and finished in 2:31:04.  My goal was to finish in 2 and a half hours, so I am pretty happy with finishing within a minute of my goal.  One thing I didn't realize about the Grand Rapids area was the amount of hills there are just west of downtown.  Not being used to the hills really tired my legs out, but I never stopped to walk and made it the entire way.  The other thing that made this run tough was the weather.  While I was lined up in the starting corral it started to rain pretty hard and I was soaked before I even began to run.  Once we started it continued to rain for about another 30 minutes, so I sloshed my way through the first 3 miles and never really got dried out until Saturday night.  I am sure though I will give this race another try next year.  

On a side note to the race day, my friend Kevin and his family made the hour drive from their home to come and cheer Tonya and I on in our races.  It was a lot of fun having them there and after the race we went out for pizza with so we could catch up.

Now I have a half marathon coming up on the second weekend of June, so I don't really have much down time to try and relax.  I am hoping for nicer weather than I had for the 25k, but you never know what the weather will be like when living in the midwest.