Race Recap: Santa Hustle - 5k

At the beginning of the month, I was lucky enough to go out into the freezing cold with a few thousand people dressed like Santa and run a 5k in Chicago. I woke up at 4:30am (I am not a morning person) and got all my things together, made my protein shake and packed the rest of breakfast in the car and trucked it over to my parent's house since I would be carpooling with my mom and sister who were going to support me.

Driving downtown was fun (not) but the traffic wasn't as bad as it usually is and we got there over an hour ahead of time. Ended up "napping" (a.k.a. my mom and sister slept) in the car until it was time to go start heading towards the corrals.

The decorations were festive. There was a giant blow up Frosty the Snowman for photo ops. Frosty decided to promptly blow over the second it was my turn to pose with him, of course. This also happened about 20 seconds before they were calling for line-ups so they could start the race.

Holy crap. I have never ever ever run with so many people IN MY LIFE. I passed approximately 2,000 people as I slinked my way dejectedly towards the 13min/mile marker. I was being realistic at least haha. I did not need a bunch of Santas trampling me as they continued to finish the course in half my time. It took about 10 minutes from the time we started moving out in waves until the time I actually passed the line to start.

(please excuse my finger)

The course itself was nice. It ran right along the lakefront and it was early enough and the weather was cooperative that there was no ice or snow, but boy oh boy was it cold. It was 9 degrees out when I left in the morning and probably 17 by the time we started. Luckily, I had fancy new pants and dressed in several shirts.. the only thing that was really cold was my bowl full of jelly. 

The thing I neglected to take into account was the air quality in the city. Man, my lungs HURT. Asthma is no cake walk, but by the first mile I had to start walking with my hands on top of my head since my chest hurt so much. During my walk I encountered the first cookie station. I happily took 2 cookies that were being handed to me. Boy was that a mistake. I took one bite and my mouth just went dry. Like dust storm in the Sahara Desert dry. I promptly stuck both cookies into my handy dandy fanny pack.

The next station was thankfully a water and "Gatorade slushy" station. I say Gatorade slushy because it was SO COLD that everything froze. It was still refreshing and kept me going. The final station was a candy one. I just ran and ran past that because after that cookie experience, just nope.

I then encountered this gentleman:

(it was a lie)

I managed to finish the race in 46 min and 46 sec, which surprisingly matched the time for the 5k that I did in May down to the second. I finished 3188th/3989 place overall and 558th/663 in my age group. Not too shabby for my second 5k I'd say. Especially since I managed to run more of it than the course in May.

I will hopefully be doing this again next year! Hoping everyone has happy and safe Holidays!