Sunday, November 21, 2010

Hot Chocolate 5K

A few weekends ago M and I ran Chicago's Hot Chocolate 5k. The course took us through Grant Park, along Lake Michigan, behind the Shedd Aquarium - a really stunning, scenic route, especially on a crisp fall morning. And crisp it was! Bloody freezing is more like it :)

I misunderstood the race times so we ending up getting there at 6:45 am and had to wait an hour for the real start time. There were 30 thousand people running this race, so a bit of body heat helped keep us warm.
While we were waiting around, guess who sauntered by? Dr. Oz! Hahahaha, you better believe that I shook his hand. His make-up was loaded on to the point of looking scary.

Before the race M and I decided to stick together and run just for fun. I surprised myself and ran the entire thing. It's so funny. When I try to run outside by myself I have to take a break after 5 minutes it seems. Here, I was going strong the whole time, hardly feeling out of breath. Endorphins must have been working overtime. We ended up having an 11:37 minute mile but I'm convinced we could have gone faster if it weren't for the huge hoards of people and a terribly small route. How you can expect 30,000 people to run down a sidewalk, I will never know...

After the race we quickly got our chocolate fondue treat and chowed down while walking back to the train. Home by 9:30am. Not bad!
I love chocolate.
I was waiting to write a blog post about the race till the official race day photos came in. They are in but I can't find any of me! I'M PISSED AT YOU, MARATHONFOTO. I sorted through 5000 pictures and only found pictures of M. We even held hands while crossing the finish line, but of course I am cut out of them.
Ohhhh well. I am so happy to cross this one off my 36 in 365 list!

4 comments:

  1. Isn't that you running beside M? I laughed when I read that you were that early for the race. Was M impressed or what? ha ha I'm really impressed that you and M ventured out to do the run.... and to shake Dr. Oz's hand... wow... makeup and all.

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  2. Whoohoo - chocolate is a wonderful motivator :)

    Good for you guys - thats great!

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  3. Do you guys have matching jackets G? Ahhh...so cute. Disappointed that your gloves, and toques don't match though.

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  4. I'm not the girl in the picture.. I'm the cut off person with the hand.

    And yes, we do have matching jackets, but it's not because we're cute, although that's true too. They were part of the race packet!

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