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Warming back up to running, a la Hot Chocolate

Warming back up to running, a la Hot Chocolate

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In the immediate 3-4 weeks post-Chicago marathon, fatigue hit me like a Mack truck day in and day out.  I’m not sure if it was preg related or not, since I was also in the throes of my fall quarter with FT grad school and since I was also working FT (those two, together or alone, are enough to make anyone tired).  At any rate, post-marathon I slooooooooowly got back into running again by running the Trick or Treat Trot 10k (dressed up like Robin – see pictures here!) and by having an awesome little “reunion run” with my buddies at the Hot Chocolate 15k.

I mentally prepared myself for the Hot Chocolate race by saying that no matter what, it was going to be a win-win type of day for me, simply because I had never run that race or that distance before—in other words, instant PR (and by extension, PPR)!  The Saturday of the race, the first Saturday in November, was one of Chicago’s first really cold days, so I had to pile on the layers of tights, long sleeves, gloves, and hats in order to stay sufficiently warm for the 15k.  Check out the pic below (right under the “ee” in “volunteers”), taken from Running Away Multisport’s race site for the event—you can see my pals Chris and Casey, along with me, in the starting area totally decked out in cold-ish running gear.  (We are local celebrities!)

The race, which has grown a lot in its short history, was actually pretty fun.  We started and finished in Grant Park and ran south along the lakefront path, so while the course wasn’t anything exotic or necessarily “new” for me, the run was well organized.  Runners also had a 5k option, which meant that as we were waiting to start our race, we got to see a lot of the 5k runners finishing their race… very cool for us and them both, since we all got the chance to motivate and psych each other up.

Following the race, a bunch of my buddies and I ventured over to John’s for a post-race brunch and impromptu birthday party for Guerline and me.  As the pictures below indicate, it was a pretty awesome time 🙂

Erin B, Guerline, Jack, Stacey, Chris, John, and me reveling in the chocolate!

So, would I do the Hot Chocolate race again?  Probably.  The only unfortunate thing is its sticker price—in the upwards of $60-70, if I remember correctly—but at the same time, there’s really no other race of that distance, in that time of the year, in Chicago.  Likewise, Running Away typically puts on good races and features great swag for their runners, so you could consider it an investment.  Running this race seemed to give me the reenergizing that I needed to beat off some of the fatigue that had been plaguing me post-marathon, though, and for that, I am quite grateful.

Huh?

Huh?

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If you’ve run in Chicago for the past three days, surely you’ll join my lament that the weather took an uptick from last week and returned to several 90+ temperature days in a row.  Ugh.  Just when we were getting used to the fall-like weather…

As I was running home from work on Monday afternoon, and then again mid-day on Tuesday, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because I saw more mile-marker signs than usual on the lakefront.  Cool! I thought.  We haven’t had a mile marker sign here for the past 4 years!  It’s about time! As I schlepped along in the heat, though, I quickly noticed that, in some places, the old-school LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon signs were still in place… in addition to some brand-spankin’ new signs that were now clad with Nike swooshes.

Huh?  What gives?

Perhaps the oddest thing about this, besides the fact that in some places, the old and new signs were both still in place, was that the new and old signs weren’t side-by-side to each other…even though they both still had the same mileage marker.  For example, I noticed that the 6.0 mile marker (by the North Avenue chess pavilion) was in its usual spot, but a few paces before (or after, depending on your direction of travel) lied the new Nike sign.  How could two signs, that were measuring the same distance, come up at different locations?

Turns out that the Chicago Park District, with support from the Active Transportation Alliance and Nike, are studying usage among the lakefront path in an effort to apply for federal monies to help improve the trail.  They’ll be studying the lakefront path for the next two weeks, and volunteers will be out assessing the lakefront’s usage by runners, bikers, cyclists, walkers… the whole gamut of folks who use it.  Doing the study over the next two weeks will cost about $25k, and the Park District will be using the analytical and quantitative expertise of Active Trans to help make sense of their findings.  They’re also going to be studying the intersections of the lakefront into each neighborhood that borders the path and possibly make some recommendations on how to alleviate congestion on some of the busier sections of the path.

Based on what I’ve read, it is a bit unclear as to whether the new Nike signs will be replacing the old lakefront signs.  (and if I had a picture of the new signs, I’d post it here… sorry, I generally don’t take pictures while I run!)

For now, anyway, don’t worry if you’re seeing double on certain spots on the lakefront path.  Chances are, you actually are 🙂