This morning I ran my second half marathon ever - the Rock n Roll Chicago Half Marathon! It was a very fun race and I was so happy to see my friends Jessica and Mae along the course! The weather was great too - partly cloudy skies and around 70 degrees! It even rained lightly on us during the race, which felt really good!
Unfortunately, this year, I'm not able to document the race with photos. Last year, Bryan rode his bicycle around the course and took photos of me and the course. But he's in Cleveland at the moment, so you're stuck with my review in words :)
The first mile was very fast and fun. The next 4 were hard for me. I ended up getting a massive stomach cramp (I never get those!!!), but was able to run through it. Before I knew it, I was at mile 7 and feeling much better! I tried to keep a decent pace through another major stomach cramp around mile 8 and sooner than I thought mile 10 was upon me! I pushed it hard to the end and felt good! My goal was to finish in under 2 hours, but unfortunately, I finished just over that. My full marathon training has been focusing on distance rather than speed, so I didn't feel like I could push myself to the max the entire race and keep the pace the whole time. I guess I was mentally running a marathon race and should have been focusing more on speed. I am very proud of myself for knocking about 20 minutes off of my time in this very race last year. That's major progress! Overall, the race was very fun and the course was awesome!
Now, I'm sitting on the couch drinking Gatorade and water with my compression socks on and massaging my quads with my running stick - and eating my favorite post-race snack... Lays sour cream and onion potato chips. And I don't feel bad about it at all!
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