Shufflin'

 

 

This weekend was the Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle 8k race in downtown Chicago. It was my first "official" 8k. I've ran farther than an 8k on my own but never participated in an official race. I ran it with my brother-in-law and his boyfriend and it was lots of fun! We got dressed up in St. Patrick's Day gear and ran it together. We ended up with a time of 56:37 which was totally okay! It was most fun to have ran together and chat during it. We also were able to spend time at the runner's expo the night before and it was great to see all the different products out there and try some new things. It was pretty informational! It was my first race through Chicago and it was fun to see the sites, especially when main roads are closed off for you and people are on the sidewalks cheering for everyone. It was definitely the largest race I've ran, with some 40,000 people, and at certain points it was a little crowded around turns where you couldn't really run too much, but other than that it was a really nice race! The weather was absolutely perfect too. I knew we all could have ran it much faster, however, on 4 hours of sleep and *cough* slight hangovers *cough*, our time was pretty decent. We hadn't intended on that part...but the night before got the best of us. One of my goals was to run the entire race without stopping and we did just that. Not to mention, we stayed at a condo on Lake Shore Drive that was pretty far north, so we walked exactly 3.2 miles to the race, ran 4.97 miles then walked 3.2 back home. We ran/walked about 11.5 miles yesterday on top of all the walking we did Saturday night around the city! 2 5ks AND an 8k in one day. Phew! Good training for my half marathon!

This whole past weekend really was just about having fun with those we love! We had two friends visiting from Germany so we took them out into the city and ended up at two different bars. One bar we actually ran into a friend of mine from high school who was celebrating her bachelorette party! It was fun to be able to join in for part of it! Around 2am we finally had decided we should probably get a little sleep before the race in the morning.

By the time we got home from dinner last night, my body was on empty. I laid down to spend time with my husband since I hadn't seen him since Saturday morning and before I knew it I was asleep by 5pm. He woke me up to tell me to get to bed at 9pm and I slept until my alarm sounded at 5:30am this morning. Now I'm refreshed and refueled and feel like I can do it all over again today. I was surprisingly not sore today. Yesterday, a few hours after the race I was sore, but not today. I did stretch really well and I'm sure walking another 3.2 miles home helped. My next race on the agenda is the Warrior Dash on June 16th. I'm looking forward to getting down and dirty at that race!

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