Half Marathon report, part 2

Eep! I completely forgot, until someone mentioned it to me, that I have yet to write up the second part of my half marathon report. Yikes, sorry! I'll make it short and sweet, and tidy up the lose ends here.
I met my friend, Julie, at the expo...she was the girl sitting looking through her race day goodie bag. I had never met her, but I recognized her from all the photos. I spotted her easy and walked up to her. We immediately smiled, hugged, and got all giddy! Here we were, surrounded by thousands of people who were equally hopped up on pre-race day adrenaline and we were meeting each other for the first time after being friends for the last 15 years! We walked around the expo for about an hour, chatted and got our photo taken in front of the race route, looked up our name on the print outs, picked up our T shirts (lame) and our free samples (Olive oil Julie?! lol), race bibs, and timing chip. Unless you really want to spend tons of money on "stuff" the expo really is a waste of time, imo. I thought it was ridiculous they made it "mandatory" for us to attend so I revolted by eating all the samples (energy bars, energy shots, drinks, etc, BEER!!!) and spending NO money. HA! I showed them. heh.
We decided that we both wanted to get back so we could each eat an early dinner and get a full nights sleep so we agreed to meet race morning around 5:30 am and hugged each other goodbye. L and I took the train back to the house (no funny stories as we were "pros" by this point) and ordered take out from a little place down the street. We were in bed by 8pm and even though I was keyed up beyond belief, was asleep by 9pm.
The alarm went off at 3:33am (good thing I sent two, because my first one didn't go off!!!) and I bolted up with major excitement. I ate half of a bagel with peanut butter, had a banana and drank almost a liter of G2. I woke L up and we proceeded to get dressed and ready. I pinned my bib number on, double, triple, and quadruple checked that I had all the necessities: chap stick, iPod, GU packets, safety pins, phone, and we headed out the door by 4:45am.

It was dark and quiet and admittedly slightly creepy. Luckily our 4 blocks we had to walk were uneventful until we made it up the train platform where a police cruiser came to an abrupt stop and officers got out of the car and yelled at some dudes on the corner to put their hands on their heads. Yikes. Before we knew it, we were on the L train headed downtown! Our first stop, there were only two of us marathon runners on the train with bib numbers on. Several stops later the train was PACKED to the gills with runners! It was so neat seeing everyone all geared up and excited, chatting it up about the race!
We got downtown, made our way through hundreds of people who were already getting their gear checked in, starting their stretches, and getting into placement. Once I found my friend at our corral, I made my way to the porta potties for my last pit stop, grabbed a bottle of water for a few last minute sips and headed back to our corral. The sun started to rise and before I knew it everyone was getting positioned. I kissed my husband goodbye, he told me good luck and that he was proud of me, took SEVERAL (hundred???) photos, and we were off to our starting spots. We did our warm up stretches and before long we were all packed in like a can of sardines.

The official time the race started was 6:30am, which is what time the first corral of runners took off. I kid you not, it took us 45 minutes to cross the START line. It was 7:15am by the time our group was able to get going. We were already hot, already sweating, already TIRED and we hadn't even started yet.

Finally, we were off and we took it s l o w. Unfortunately I injured my hip on my last trianing run and it never properly had the chance to heal before the half so here I was, running in already 80 something degree heat with a gimpy hip (did I mention I was lucky enough to also be on my period?! Wow!) and I was praying HARD that I would have the endurance to finish this race I had trained so hard for.
Miles 1 and 2 went fast, but I realized my Nike+ wasn't calibrated correctly and was reading my pace to be faster and my miles to be quicker. It wasn't off by much, but when it said I was already at mile 3 and we weren't yet, that was a real drag for the mental aspect. Can you say downer? It basically screwed us up our first several miles, but by mile 4 I really didn't give a crap, as I was already wanting to die from heat exhaustion anyway. My friend was feeling a surge of energy and I told to GO WITH IT. I didn't care that she went ahead of me beacuse my entire goal during this whole race was just to finsih. Time didn't matter to me. I gave her the go ahead and off she went! Good for her!

Mile 5 came and to my surprise my husband was on the sidelines looking for me! I waved him down and slowed to a walk so I could eat a GU packet. It was so great seeing him and getting a kiss from him! He took my photo and off I went again.I can't say that it really started sucking til mile 6. By this time my hip was burning and throbbing like I had never felt, it was hotter than hell (I swear it was hell), my clothes were already saturated heavy with sweat, and I couldn't quench my thirst no mater how many cups of Cytomax and water/ice I drank. I had been running with a girl who asked if she could keep pace with us during the first several miles and by this time we were fast friends and chatting, keeping each other going and sharing water (hey! when you are running 13 miles on a 86 degree day and nearly dying of heat stroke you don't care about sharing water with strangers, you're just grateful for it, let me tell you!!!). Nicole and I took it easy for awhile, walked a bit, ran a bit, and learned lots of things about one another. I was grateful for the company as, surprisingly, I got bored with my iPod.

I think it was mile 8 that we got separated due to some people in her family coming to run with her. I didn't mind running the rest of the race "solo" (aside from the hundreds of people all around me still) as it gave me time to focus and sort out my feelings. By mile 9 I wanted to kill someone, my legs and hips hurt so bad, but they hurt WORSE when I slowed to a walk, so I kept running, just way slow. At each water/ice station I'd take several cups. Two to pour over me, two to drink, and a cup of ice to chew on during the run. The ice was the best thing I had ever had...well until they started handing out wet cold sponges on mile 11. OMG was that heavenly!

Mile 12 and 13 were a near blur. I remember feeling faint but just kept telling myself I was almost there. I saw many people sitting on the side, laying down, nearly passing out, and even saw a few get taken in by med techs. The absolute worst mile was that last one. Not only was there a slight incline towards the end (by this point my legs were jello!) but there were no more water stations. I wanted this race to be OVER already and I just wanted to be out of all the pain. Many people were cheering on the sidelines that we were almost there, that the end was in sight and I started getting emotional and excited. I was really going to finish this race. I was really going TO DO THIS!!!

The last .1 seemed to take forever. Once I turned a corner I saw the finish line and nearly bolted outta my sneakers! I don't remember much, just looking at the clock and realizing that all the agony was about to end! I made it to the finish, went through a "tunnel" of high 5's and nearly wanted to collapse! There Julie was waiting for me, open arms, and teary eyed! We embraced and I totally broke down. My emotions came flooding like crazy and the tears started running. All I remember her saying was, "We did it! We did it! Chicago was a bitch to run in this heat and we did it!" She pointed to my husband and I immediately made my way over to him, where again, there were more tears! My husband was so relieved to see me as he thought something had happened to me as he stopped getting the auto text updates he was Supposed to be getting from the timing chip throughout the entire race. He thought the heat and my injury had prevented me from finishing and that I was somewhere on the sidelines. He was SO happy to see me and gave me many many MANY hugs and kisses!

I got my medal (proudest moment ever aside from childbirth!!!!), my ice cold towel to put around my neck, my 3 popsicles I eagerly slurped up, my two bottles of water and then we made our way over to the sprinklers! Ahhhh sweet Jesus!

We collapsed onto a shady piece of grass and I could already feel the soreness creep into every single muscle in my body. I was a hot sweaty mess, but a PROUD hot sweaty mess! I didn't want to move but knew if we didn't I never get up. Besides, we still needed to get back to the train, get back to the house, get packed and get back on the road to Nebraska.

Oh why did we plan such a rushed trip!!!!!

Half Marathon Report, Part 1

I’m back from Chicago, body back to normal for the most part, soreness gone, and medal proudly hanging in my bedroom. Chicago was an experience for sure!

We arrived around 1am the night of Friday, July 30^th. The drive wasn’t bad, even though driving in the dark and in the rain is not only boring but also nerve wracking. We attempted listening to the audio book Cujo, by Stephen King, but just couldn’t get into it. We spent most of the time talking, laughing over silly stuff, and wishing we were already there. We only stopped for bathroom breaks and gas, putting our drive time around 7 hours. Maybe because of the anticipation, or maybe because of the dark, but for whatever reason it really felt more like 10+ hours.

Our original plan of staying in a hotel right downtown was changed last minute due to some extended family being gracious enough to offer their uptown home to us. They were going to be out of town on their own weekend vacation, so they told us we could stay at their place. This was great for so many reasons! First just having the comforts of “home” is nice. Also staying with family, instead of a hotel saved us a few hundred dollars, not only because of the cost of the room, but mainly because of the ridiculous parking fee’s in downtown Chicago. Last but certainly not least, they have a gorgeous home and we felt we could truly relax while there.

We arrived at the house a little after 1am and it was still raining. We were in the city so it was quite interesting figuring out the parking situation, (which by the way if you don’t know how to parallel park in Chicago you can consider yourself screwed!) finding the right garage that went with the house (which entailed finding the correct narrow little alleyway, which also meant finding out who the hell parked a U-haul truck in the middle of the alley right in FRONT of the garage we needed to get into!), typing in codes, hunting around for the “secret” key, finding light switches in a house we had never been to before and figuring out how everything worked. We had a good time (honestly) figuring all these things out and managed with no problems. We took ourselves on a tour of the house and got ourselves comfortable and settled in for some sleep!

Saturday, July 31, I awoke early, around 6:30am. I got up and wandered into the kitchen and found cereal, bananas and milk. I flipped on the TV and enjoyed some background noise while I ate and figured out our game plan for the day. We needed to take the L train downtown, then take the Metra train to McCormick Place to get to the health and fitness expo so that not only could I meet my friend, Julie, but also so we could pick up our race packet and timing chip. I knew this would be an experience for us because we’ve never taken the train in Chicago before.

Larry woke up, ate breakfast and we enjoyed the early morning out on the back deck, which was adorned with the most beautiful flowers and plants I’d seen. It didn’t even feel like we were staying in the city, felt more like some private little cottage or bungalow. After we looked up our train schedules and directions, we showered and got dressed.

We headed out of the house plenty early enough to find the train terminal, which had us walking about 3-4 blocks. Normally I would welcome the walk, but given the fact that it felt like a thousand degrees out and that tomorrow I would be running 13.1 miles, I wanted to keep all leg movement to a serious minimum. Today was supposed to be a serious rest day! We found the terminal, which was right on the street (not what I expected) and right on the corner of the “rough crowd.” Visualize the home boyz, teeth full of grillz, paper bags around their 40s, shootin’ the breeze (or each other!), ladies with hiked up skirts, and older folk pushing their groceries carts of cans, talking to themselves and their imaginary friends. We quickly learned that in Chicago, there are many parts of the city where there's just a few block's difference between safe and potentially dangerous. While there were some “interesting” people on this stretch of the street, they pretty much kept to themselves and we carried ourselves like we knew where we were going. This was all quite the hilarious experience looking back NOW, but then??? Not so much!

I couldn’t figure how to scan my train card, couldn’t figure out the stupid turnstile, and couldn’t figure out how to get through, period! So much for looking like we knew what we were doing! We’re not stupid by any means; we had just never done this before. There was an entire line of not-so-patient, not-so-nice “regulars” behind me, who were not so happy with the obvious out of town girl in front of them (ME!) who didn’t know WHAT THE HELL she was doing and was going to cause them to miss their train. I figured it would be no problem to turn around and ask one of these “nice” people behind me to help me out. Yikes. I was greeted with a large black woman who had the most annoying steamed up look on her face, eye narrowed at me, TORQUED written all over her face. I was all, “Excuse me, could you be kind enough to tell me how to scan this card so we can get through” and I swear before I even got the words out, she yelled, “IT SAYS ENTER! GOOOO!” OMG, I never turned around so fast in my life. These people scared me! Can you say ordeal? We finally made it through the damn turnstiles and made our way up the zillion flights of stairs to the platform. Didn’t I say I wanted to do the least amount of legwork? Yeah forget that. My legs were ALREADY tired and we hadn’t even started our day yet.

We got upstairs and I asked a “normal looking” 20-something year old man if we were on the correct train platform for downtown (red line). He looked at my print out and confirmed we were in the right place, which was a relief. Once the train stopped and picked us up and we found a seat (or a pole in Larry’s case), he explained to us the next train stop we’d not only want to get off at, but then explained we needed to transfer to the brown line to get downtown. It seemed complicated, but once we figured it out, it was all quite easy. So far. I was so happy we finally ran into a nice person who was so helpful and went out of his way to make sure we were getting onto the correct trains. Little did I know that several hours later on the way back FROM the expo, we would see this same “normal looking” 20-something year old man screaming at the top of his lungs all kinds of profanities and ranting and raving like a maniac at the train staff for making him miss a certain train. Ooooh, I’m staying outta his way!

We made it downtown and next, needed to find the Metra train station, which I swear, no one in Chicago knew about. Part of downtown was blocked off for the filming of Transformers 3 and the streets were packed with people and their cameras wanting to get a shot of whatever famous celebrity might have been at the scene. There were Hollywood catering trucks everywhere, men in white aprons and food trays bustling in and out of buildings, cars honking like crazy, and people walking every which way, nearly all having a coffee cup glued to their hand and a cell phone attached to their ear. Here we were in the middle of it all, looking at our phones for GPS, looking at our directions trying to figure out in all the confusion how to get to the other train station. We asked a CTA employee who was guarding the blocked road to verify the directions we had and she ended up sending us 4 blocks into the WRONG direction. My legs were tired and I was starting to get CRABBY! I swear after several more loops around the block and asking 3 more people directions, we finally found a police officer to tell us the Metra train station was just around the corner, under ground.

We made our way down to what seemed like a whole different world. It was nice! It was like an underground airport only for trains! It was a long terminal with restaurants, gift shops, bars, and lounge places. It was clean and cool and wait!!! Confusing! How do we know what train to take? Wait…where ARE the trains? We don’t see any, anywhere! Where is a schedule? What do you mean we need tickets? What tickets? Where do we find the tickets? How much are the tickets? Where do you even get on and off at? Oy! We made our way up to a ticket counter where we told the guy we had no idea what we needed to do and his attitude seriously upset me. All I’m going to say is that he was an ASS with a capital A, and I wanted nothing to do with these rude Chicago people anymore. NOT EVERYONE lives here and KNOWS WTF to do, excuse ME! After he gave us our tickets, we still had no idea where the train platforms were. We found an “information” counter and were greeted by, guess who? Yes! Another RUDE CITY EMPLOYEE who looked us like we were aliens. She had a stone cold face, pursed ruby red lips and eyes narrowed flat. WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THE NARROWED MEAN EYES IN THIS CITY?!?!?!?!?!

Long story even longer, we finally made it down a dark stairway, through some doors to a platform. Several minutes later we were on a nice clean train, sitting side by side in real seats and on our way underground to the expo at McCormick Place. The train conductor came by and punched our tickets and we were able to relax our minds (and our legs!!!!) for several minutes.

The good news…the train took us right under McCormick Place so we didn’t have to walk around the city anymore. We walked up a few flights of stairs and were smack in the middle of a huge convention center were thousands of other people were off to get their race packets as well. Ahhh…the first time all morning I felt like we belonged somewhere. I knew we were surrounded by people who were there for the same reasons we were! Yay comradery! Now I felt relaxed and ready to find my friend, Julie.

By the way, have I mentioned that I’ve known Julie for 15 years but this was to be our first time EVER meeting?! Wait…is that her? Sitting over there on a ledge looking through her race packet and good bag? I can’t quite tell, but I think it’s her. I’m not quite sure but I start to walk over anyway. I get up to this person and say, ‘Heyyyyy You!”

She looks up, and………