Last night, I ran this in downtown Chicago with Heath. About 23,000 people participated in the 3.5 mile run, so it was pretty packed. I was a bit worried about how I'd do since I've been fighting this awful cold for the past week (ugh a WEEK, get gone already cold), but Heath and I were able to run the whole thing in about 37 min, which is just under 11 min/mile. I'm very happy with that, and Heath met his goal of beating his time from last year (by 8 minutes, how great is that?!).
After the race, the companies had tents set up with food and stuff, so I hung out with Heath at the gigantic BCBS tent (complete with Christmast lights strung around it) for a bit (mooching one of their hot dogs and a beer) before heading over to the relatively quaint Joint Commission tent, which has a better spread, but no beer.
It was a lot of fun, and also reminded me of how helpful it is to run with somebody. It's a lot easier to keep going when you have somebody to talk to and it's nice to motivate each other. Whenever you run, you have points along the run that you don't feel so great and kind of get that pull to walk a bit. But if you are with somebody else, you usually don't both have those moments at the same time, so you take turns keeping each other going. Uh, also I need to recalibrate my heart rate monitor. Evidently, I am able to maintain over 100% of my max HR for an extended amount of time without dying. I'm thinking it underestimated my max HR by just a tad...
Next up: Run for the Zoo on June 3rd -- my first 10K run ever! Also, Quad Cities Triathlon on June 16. Race season is heating up, baby! (Not really. These and my big tri are the only things on my calendar for this summer so far. :P)
