Monday, October 12, 2009

Chicago Marathon Oct 11, 2009


(Team Asha runners - before the start)

This was my 5th year of running the Chicago Marathon with Team Asha and I was looking forward to improving my PR by about 5 minutes.

The hotel offered us breakfast at 4:30am which was a blessing - there was a lot of nervous energy and excited faces - but most of all, a lot of concern about the temp...it was COLD! While we were in the bus heading out to the start the temp was 28F (-2C)!! It was not snowing but it was COLD. After a quick warm up I headed out to the start. The temp warmed up to about 33F and then topped out at 40F. I kept pace with the 3:45:00 pace group and eased into a 3:44:07 finish.

All our runners came in beaming and smiling, they really enjoyed the race. Almost all of them had set their personal best times. The cold weather seemed to have helped us Californians.

Asha Chicago had done a superb job, our tent in the charity village was heated and there was awesome food & massages awaiting us post race. I love this race, there is just so much energy in this city and the support is amazing. Looking forward to running Chicago 10/10/10 with my sister...it will be her first marathon.