With very little training and not quite knowing what to expect, I headed downtown yesterday morning with one simple goal: to finish the race ahead of a least one other person.  Was the mission accomplished or was it a day filled with failure?

The day started at 4:30 in the morning with a quick shower and breakfast before hitting the road at 5:00.  There is not a lot of public transportation options from the suburbs at that time of day, and I didn’t want to spend $20 for parking, so I drove down to 35th Street and switched over to the Red Line, which got me down to the greater museum campus around 6:15, an hour before the race started.

Everything was going down on the south side of Soldier Field, which is where I met up with my old friend Tina and her friends that were also participating in the festivities.  It basically turned into 45 minutes of pictures before it was time to line up in the starting corral. Continue reading →