>Race Report: Shamrock Shuffle 8K, Chicago

>I have no photos to post yet but the race was great!! First things first: my goal was 47:00 and my actual chip time was 46:18!! I was excited.

Katie and I took the Metra into the city this morning at about 6AM. We got to Union Station and pondered how we would ever walk a mile in 45 minutes, haha. We got to where we were meeting her friend who had picked up our packets for us. I was very excited about the shirt and 1) it fit! (our tech shirts from the Turkey Trot were waaayyy too small) and 2) they were actually Nike shirts, white with green lettering. Very nice.

There were 40,000 runners! I was in Start Corral D (they had A-H, so not bad!) and didn’t cross the start line until 17 minutes showed on the time clock. I started my Garmin and took off! I should add that I didn’t have music with me; I made a conscious and purposeful decision to challenge myself that way. I was really able to focus on my breathing.

Here is a map uploaded from the Garmin of the route.

The elevation gain and loss was only 9 feet.. so a very flat course.

I think I started off too fast because by mile 2.5 all I was thinking was, When will this be over?! But I kept chugging along and finished strong. At one point my Garmin lost GPS signal, so my pace was all messed up, but it got the time right.

Here’s a graph of my HR throughout..

See? No spikes, just a good progression to the end of the race.

Post-race I had three glasses of Gatorade and a bottle of water. I ate a banana and protein bar. Of course, the best part is the post-race beer. Haha, it’s always cheap beer and this is the first race I’ve been to that’s had it.

We lounged around on the grass by Buckingham Fountain and then decided to walk up to Navy Pier. We had lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp, a first for me. Yum. We took a water taxi back to Union Station and boarded the train for Elgin.

It was a great day with beautiful weather. Seriously, we couldn’t have had better weather up there. My skin shows it though; I’m sporting the first sunburn of the season. I’m gonna fryyyy in Texas. I had a nice 24 hours with Bruce, Katie and Lena. I’m thankful that Aaron’s family has been here for me throughout his time away.

20 days!