Santa Hustle 2013

December 7, 2013

Thirteenth 5k - Santa Hustle

Chicago, IL

Nine degrees!

Time 31:51 Pace 10:16

Place 1139/3989 overall; 43/226 age/gender

Brrrrr! As I sat and waited for the bus on the corner of Clark and Devon I took a hesitant look at the temperature on my phone. Holy Cats! It said 9 degrees. This was my bulky outfit:

• One pair compression knee high socks
• One pair Christmas sweater socks
• One pair Cw-x running tights
• One pair thermal running tights
• Newton running shoes 
• One thermal athletic turtleneck
• One thermal athletic jacket with a down face
• One longsleeve tech santa shirt
• One North Face jacket (removed for the race)
• One ear-covering head band wrap thing
• One running beanie with the hole in the back for a pony tail
• One full head/face mask (not worn during commute)
• One Santa hat (worn during commute home)
• One Santa beard (worn only during race)
• One pair Mizuno running gloves (I normally cant run in gloves but I thought today would be a good day to make an exception lest I want to lose some fingers).
• 

I waited for what seemed like 2 hours for the bus and then transfered to another bus. Thankfully the wait for the second bus was only a minute or two. This bus dropped me off right at the the race site in front of Soldier Field. I checked my bag with about 5 minutes to spare. I lost feeling in my toes so I started jumping up and down with the rest of the ice people. Around mile 2 (twenty long minutes in), I finally regained feeling in my toes. As I write this post it's January 6th and -14 degrees out. Looking back the Santa Hustle day was a heat wave.

As usual I had technical difficulties with my Runkeeper app. probably due  to the tunnel we ran under for a little bit. I was very surprised to see my average pace of 10:16!

 I really wasnt in the mood for this race and people were annoying me from the get go...especially those idiot walkers who walk in the middle of the course. I had to calmly say to them as I passed, "walkers stay to the right please." Again, this was one of those fun races which draws in dilly dalliers....they so dillied and dallied that they stopped to take photos along the way of themselves with the best skyline in the world in the background.



They offered cookies and candy along the course but I didnt stop. I just wanted to be done! I didnt get a few cookies post race though. They didnt have much other free crap so I took what I could get.

As I walked back to the red line I stopped at Trader Joes. damn, what a beautiful store! I wanted to buy everything but I was on foot and I no longer live a block from the L. I dont know how people without cars do it. I also stopped at Jersey Mikes. The counter guy gave me a free cookie with it being my first visit and all and he gave me a bottle of pop for the price of a fountain drink. It turned out to be a good day after all!

I wore my Santa Hat home and I'm sure I looked like a complete dork. That's the great thing about being an old lady; I care less and less of what people think when they look at me. As I was crossing Clark some dude leaned into my zone and said "youre the best looking Santa I've ever seen." Seriously? ewwwww. I'm sure he was gay. Then as I passed the bar on the corner another dude ran up to the window from the inside, banged and the glass, waved and smiled at me. 

Good Day.