Rock n Roll Chicago Half Marathon

So the day for me began at 3:40 in the morning. I was so excited I couldn't sleep. I tried and finally when turning over a little too forcefully at 4:20, my pillow sent my water glass flying and I realized that I was being ridiculous, there was no way I could fall back asleep! Might as well get up and make some oatmeal and start the mass movements/stomach gastrocolic reflex for the day tee hee :)
*** for non med-school people,
mass movements: occur 1-3x/day and function to move the contents of the large intestine over long distances, such as from the transverse colon to the sigmoid colon and a final mass movement propels fecal contents into the rectum, where they are stored until defecation occurs. In many people these are strongest for about 15 minutes during the first hour after eating breakfast.

Gastrocolic reflex: A long reflex arc whereby distention of the stomach by food increases the motility of the colon and increases the frequency of mass movements in the large intestine.

I met up with my coworker Paul (awesome guy by the way, I want him to be my primary care doctor, he's super laid back and just puts everyone at ease around him. Everyone who has been paired with him at work opens up and is nicer to be around. He just brings out the best in people!) to jog over to the race. As we were in different corals, we split off soon after arriving there and I met up with my morning workout team. Below is a picture of Tre who runs his own fitness program, which is my weight training, and is just awesome! There is a team environment and all the people are so great that we have now become a team. Plus cross training is what keeps me from breaking :)

The elite start was exciting, with several great people around me (at least they looked impressive, I don't know who they are). The start was very fast and I started at a 5:00 pace, but was able to pull back majorly in pace within .7 miles fortunately! And I let all the other women go ahead of me.

The course was flat and fast. The only problem is that my GPS signal was cut off by all the tall buildings, so for the first time I had no idea what pace I was going. I had to go off of 'feeling', which was definitely not ideal! Especially because due to my sheer exhaustion with spending such long hours at work I have not done a single tempo run in at least 2 months. So I had no 'feeling' to go off of, ha!

But i tried to hold strong and tried to pick people off. A lot of people in front of me dropped out of the race, more than I have seen before. One guy said it was a bad day as I passed him and I said we can't think that way. Many of the miles were not marked (as far as I noticed, and I was looking as my GPS was not working, but I was still more focused on the race so they could have been there). I saw a girl infront of me get frustrated and throw up her arms and yell something towards people working the race near where I expected a mile marker to be located and I realized I had a lot of these people beat. While I may be stressed and under-training relative to ideal, I am learning how to funnel/channel my emotions. I too have many strong emotions and feel like I'm failing. But what happens when I am on rounds and talking to a woman with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy & MS who has in the last 3 weeks gone from being able to sometimes walk and be able to speak to being completely bed ridden and barely able to get a word out? I suck up my emotions and focus on her. I channel my frustration into the race and deal with the problem at hand. I do not waste my energy and that is what makes me a good runner. I hold strong where I can and vent where it is appropriate/useful. So I thought of my inner strength on rounds and beat the people who did not funnel their frustrations appropriately into the race.

While it was my slowest race of the season, in many ways it was my strongest and I am proud of my fifth place finish. It shows my emotional growth and that I have held steady despite having been put through the turmoil of moving to a new city by myself where I knew absolutely no one and starting a new job where I really wanted to do my best. I have to thank my new friends in Chicago and my morning workout team for helping me stay strong when I have felt very weak at many points this summer :) Below is a cupcake that my workout teammate Jimmy and his sister dropped by my house this evening to say congrats! I have never gotten a congrats cupcake before!

Oh, and the theme song for this race was Jay-Z Run this town. Cause we gonna run this town tonight!

Theme lines: Life's a game, but it's not fair. I break the rules so I don't care. So I keep doin my own thing, walkin tall against the rain. Victory's within the mile. Almost there, don't give up now. Only thing that's on my mind is who's gonna run this town tonight... We Are, yeah I said it WE ARE!

We did it! Thank you to my support team! Oh, and I promised my neighbor, Jessica Bauer, that I would tell everyone that if I did well, it was due to the 3-course german meal she prepared last night, as Germany and German food is amazing (or maybe just her cooking is amazing!)

A video from Chance & Jimmy from my am workout/crosstraining team lead by Tre :)