Race Report: Soldier Field 10 Mile

Location: Chicago, IL
Date: 5/25/2013
Time: 7:00 AM
Weather: low 50s, 5-10 mph winds out of the ENE

Time: 1:07:30
Overall:267/12507
Division: 40/731 (25-29)

THE COURSE

WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

Like anything going on Memorial Day weekend, the weather can be a crap shoot. Case in point, last year the Madison Marathon was forced to cancel it's marathon due to extremely high temperatures. Thankfully, we had unseasonably cool temperatures, which, at least in my opinion, made the weather absolutely perfect for running. None of this is really under the control of the race organizers, but it didn't hurt. Now for the real thoughts...

I may not like the Bears in any way shape or form, but like Badger fans to Crazylegs, Bears fans flock to the SF10. This gives the crowd/runners a better vibe than most races can ever hope to achieve.

Beyond the atmosphere, the flat course with only a handful of turns is made for setting a PR (which is extremely easy when you've never run a ten mile race before). Post-race there was a large party area where you could see Soul Asylum play, and you got one free Goose Island 312 (yes, it's owned by Budweiser now, but it's decent... oh yeah, CRAZYLEGS, see you can just give one decent beer, it's okay!).

WHAT WASN'T SO GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

I'm going to skip over the whole part where I didn't know where the CARA tent was, if you need to know, ask me. This wasn't anyone's fault but my own. If I rant about it here, it'll seem like I'm holding it against Fleet Feet Chicago and the SF10.

There are only two complaints that I have about the SF10.

• Packet pickup - I've noticed in the past few years an increasing number of races that don't have packet pickup on the morning of the race. Most of these are larger races that have an expo that they are trying to funnel you through to get you to spend money. The SF10 falls into the category of being a larger race, but their expo is the Fleet Feet Chicago store in Old Town. Another part about all of these larger races is that they've all fallen on Sunday (save for the Walt Disney World Half Marathon, but Disney gets a pass as it's a destination race, not a local race). The SF10 falls bright and early on a Saturday morning. Yes, I know you want people to come through your store, but when you make it close to impossible for anyone from any sort of distance away from Chicago to run your race, it just hurts your brand. Had I not known people who were going to do the race that lived in the Chicago area, I wouldn't have done the race. I would have been forced to take Friday afternoon off to fight through Memorial Day weekend traffic to get to Lincoln Park in Chicago just to pick up a packet. (At which point I would have to fight back through traffic out to Mt. Prospect to Vanessa's parents' house.) If you want to charge a fee for race day pickup, I'm fine with that (to an extent), but give people from a ways away a chance...
• Traffic control - Yes, you're trying to get about 8,000 cars into three different parking in a short amount of time, but the map you give for parking is incorrect. Don't tell me I can get to the south parking lots where I'm supposed to meet my friends, and then not have that exit off of Lakeshore Drive open at all. Sure, I showed up later than I expected. Sure, I skipped a whole bunch of cars to get where I needed on time. Sure, everything worked out in the end. But the huge bottleneck from I-55 all the way to Soldier Field is somewhat ridiculous. There has to be a way to improve on that.

  OVERALL RACE THOUGHTS

Coming into the race, I wasn't sure what to expect. I have a foot that hasn't healed since Disney, I have a knee that decides to flare up and give me issues whenever it pleases, and I had never done the race before.

Besides cutting it too close getting into the corrals before the race, everything then went about as well as I could have hoped. I ended up starting right at the front of the second wave, which meant that I had about three miles of open road in front of me without having to worry about other runners. It also meant that the last seven miles were me picking off people one-by-one and group-by-group. I ran with another guy for the first eight miles or so before he dropped back a bit, which always provides a great push for me when in a race.

Really, I have nothing to complain about, I was hoping to run around 70 minutes, and would have been fine with 72, but my legs felt great, I didn't have any trouble breathing (unlike Crazylegs), and the weather was perfect, which lead me to run 2 1/2 minutes faster than my goal.


BLING

 

Yeah, it's a computer generated image, but it's all you really need. It's a nice medal, about 3" in diameter. Sadly, putting this on my hook means that the Goofy's Challenge medal gets covered up...