Race Report: Shamrock Shuffle

So yesterday I ran the 2015 Shamrock Shuffle, on a windy gray day, interestingly the Garmin had me looking like I was spider man. If you look closely at the map below you see I took some direct paths to certain spots on the course. Mostly through sky scrapers, there was no breaking and entering, since I also got 3,061 feet of elevation gain as well so I was clearly swinging from place to place. By the way, Chicago is flat, my guess the high point of this race was about 100 feet higher then the start, so much for GPS in high rises!

As for the race I did very well, felt strong throughout, focused on mimicking my marathon start process, which is to run a slow mile to warm up which I did at 13:43. Then my Shamrock race plan kicked in and I tried to hold a good solid steady pace for the middle 3 miles (11:17, 11:20, 11:25) and then run as strong and fast as I could to the finish line (9:43) so I was able to accomplish all my goals, plus I got the sense of the start of a big city Marathon for one of my long range goals this fall.

I had a small blister on my left foot start around mile 4, which I attribute to wearing a pair of socks that protected my ankles rather then my feet because I was afraid of the cold. Lesson learned there! Did not eat at all during race, had a bagel about 3 hours before race time, and a nice large lasagna the night before. So all in all a great time!

This week also went well with 24 miles of good solid running, I elected to pass on a 4 miler on Thursday so I would be a little fresher for the 11 miles on Saturday and then the race on Sunday and I think that paid off quite well!