Chicago Hot Chocolate 15k

This is the third time running this race. Every year it is getting better. The packet pick up was at McCormack Place and it flowed well as it did last year. They had a nice swag and they also introduced a medal for the 15k this year.

This year they had the 15k, 5k and a 3k walk. With the three options they said that there were 40,000 participants. Jo came to our place and we drove downtown early enough to park and get to our corral. There was a bunch of people from Hinsdale and some people from AFIA that were running the race, but there was 2 other people that I was planning on seeing before we started, Stacey and Nirma. When they started moving the corrals up I saw Stacey, so she joined us while we waited, but we didn’t see Nirma.

It took us awhile before we started, but it wasn’t as long as it was in prior years. You can tell that they are improving, and hopefully it will get better next year. Once we started we ran north on Columbus and Stacey went on a faster pace so we lost her, we then turned left onto Lower Wacker, we stayed on Lower Wacker for awhile and then we finally went south through downtown. At that point I saw Tony on the sidewalk and when I looked north I saw his wife Nirma!

They mixed the 5k and 15k runners together. We were were together until they split us at Michigan and Roosevelt. Once we split the course was much better, it wasn’t as crowded. The one thing that I didn’t like was that there wasn’t a bathroom until almost the 4th mile. They added marshmallows along the course, which I didn’t have to pull out my snacks.

I stayed with Jo the whole time. It was fun running with him, and he did very well. We only had 1 walking break, a bathroom break and short stop at the refreshment stations. We kept a pretty steady pace and finished at 2hrs 3min 49sec. We got our medals once we crossed the finish, which they were handing out still in the plastic. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t put it around our necks, but oh well. After we met up with Rick we got our chocolate.