I finished yesterday's 5k in 26min 18 sec for a pace of 8min 29sec and I finished 162 in my division(age group 30-34) and 1,042 out of 2,672 runners. Not a personal record but still pretty good for me and I finished within the top 50%.
Now for the bad...
As you may have gathered from my earlier post last night before I headed to the race it was raining. Well according to the trusty weather men there was to be a clearing of about two and a half hours between the storms. As I was headed out the door, the skies had parted and the sun had come out. Great, this was going to be a great race and event. So the race got underway and I am truckn' along when about mile 1.5 the clouds started gathering...no worries we still had time...it was mile 2.75 when we rounded the corner of Green and Adams streets and started heading west that everyone looked at the sky and an audible "oh shit" and a visible step back came out of just about every runner. The sky looked like something out of Armageddon. I kicked it in determined to get across the line before the rain. No such luck! The rain started with luckily not much further to go. No worries, I finished, made a good time, and it was lightly raining. It was when I caught my breath that the clouds opened up and dumped a monsoon on us.
Now this is where I start to get a bit peeved. One would think that event organizers as well as
attendees would pay attention to weather reports. Everyone made a mad dash to the gear check. Where one would expect to find people there handing out the gear that you had checked. No, what we found was about 5 people to hand out gear that had been checked and placed into no particular order. For 2,700 runners! WTF? So here is everyone being rained on and nobody controlling the madness. Well there was a Chicago Police Officer there yelling at everyone to get back from the tents....only to then yell at everyone to get into the tents. The workers who were supposed to handle the gear check pretty much gave up and started picking up bags and yelling out numbers...what? They were yelling out numbers when people were still out on the course. What 
about those of us who were standing right there with our numbers ready to go! Well then people started jumping the barricades and rifling through every one's gear until they found there's. Well with Mr. Police Officer in front of me and not wanting to get involved with the pandemonium, I was set on not getting involved. This had to get better and someone had to take control, right? Wrong! More rain came, more people came, some girls started crying. Well this is when I broke...I crawled under the table took three girls numbers, found there stuff and mine and got the heck out of there! Well to another tent on the other side that had been abandoned by the event staff. This is where I met up with my friend, and made a panicked call to my sister to grab some towels and come save me. Thankfully she lived near-by. I being the cleaver one spotted a bar Union Park and we waited for our ride while downing a Miller-lite....which I still think Chicago Events should re-pay me for as there was supposed to be a block party after the race. What poor planning went into this. 
Hello...weather.com come to any one's mind? Why would you not plan for this, have tents, make the event happen...pull it off!OK, my rant is over now...I think by looking at the few pictures I have posted it should show you why I ranted. I did not look pretty or amused last night. Thank god for Wakamono and the Pear-tini for bringing me back to center.
So, why am I running? I am running and training for the AIDS Marathon in Honolulu December 14. Please show your support by sponsoring me at my donation page. All money raised goes to support AIDS Foundation Chicago.
TGIF!
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