My wife and I kicked off our 2013 race year with the Team Ortho Foundation Get Lucky 7k in Chicago. It was a cold morning, barely above freezing, and windy along the Chicago lakefront. The starting line for the race was just outside Soldier's Field, where several thousand people waited to start the 7k race. About 30 minutes earlier the Half Marathon had taken off. Considering the cold, there was a pretty good turnout for the race. My wife runs about an 11 minute mile average usually but we were unable to get to the correct starting position because of the number of people. Unfortunately, a lot of walkers lined up towards the front and were therefore taking the spots other runners should have had and severely gridlocked the start of the race.
There was very little ceremony for the start. In fact, I didn't even know the race had started until I saw the crowd moving. The crowd inched toward the start line slowly at first but eventually picked up the pace. It took around 3:30 for us to actually get to the start line and we were off.
Coming off the start line was slow at first. Like I said before,many walkers had lined up at the front of the crowd, instead of at the end like they were supposed to. This caused a bad delay for the first half mile or so, especially since many of the walkers did not move over to the right, but instead chose to walk side by side down the middle of the path, which wasn't wide to begin with.
About a mile in the path opened up considerably and we were able to move more smoothly through the crowd. Raquel at this point was stripping off her gloves and unzipping her sweatshirt, she always wears too much and then gets hot. I spent the rest of the race carrying her gloves for her. We kept a good pace for the first half of the race heading South along the lakefront. Once we made the turn to come back North the wind picked up a lot and it started to sleet/snow a little. This made the second half of the race much slower and more miserable.
The view along the lakefront, which I usually enjoy, was mitigated by the wind and stinging sleet coming down. Raquel pushed on through it and refused to give up. Once we got back to McCormick Place, I was able to reassure her that the finish line was near. We pushed on for the last mile and ended up finishing with a time of 53:34. Not bad for her first 7k and the longest road race she has run to date.
My next race will be the Shamrock Shuffle on April 7th and our next race together is the Indiana Spartan Sprint on April 27th. All in all, this race was a nice start to the year and will make us thankful for nicer race weather and prepare us for worse in the coming months.
Ron
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