Race to Wrigley 5K

The big reason why I ran this race is because they gave finisher medals this year that celebrated the world series championship. So when my friend pointed it out to me I signed up right away. Luckily I did because the race sold out relatively fast.  With Chicago weather being weird these days we’ve been watching the weather closely days before the race, it kept on fluctuating from clear to rainy, but a few days before the race it showed that there was a chance of rain in the morning and more in the afternoon, so we were lucky that the held out for the morning.

My friend from out of town came to run this race, since he is a Cubs fan. We met him by the stadium and hung out and took pictures in front of the Marquee. It was a bit chilly and windy that morning, but did not complain because it wasn’t raining. There were now corrals, so we made our way to the start and waited with a whole bunch of people in Cubs gear waiting for the National Anthem and the official start.

Once we started we ran west on Addison and then took a right on Ravenswood. We ran 4 blocks and then took a right onto Irving Park Road. We then took a left at Southport and then a right on Belle Plaine. We were not on Belle Plaine that long and took a right onto Clark Ave. In the past they had us run on Clark back to the ballfield, but this time they had us turn left and ran again on Irving Park Road. We ran up to Sheffield Ave and took a left and headed back to the field. Once we got to the field they routed us into the stadium via the bleachers entrance. We ran through the corridors and made our way to the exit right below the marquee, and routed us to Clark Street toward the Finish. There was a big bottle neck at the finish, so we walked our way towards the finish and probably waited for almost 5 minutes to cross. It is because they had the water and bananas really close to the finish and the medals just there too. I finished in 34min 43sec. Did pretty good, maybe if there wasn’t a bottleneck at the finish I could have had a sub 30 time! I do believe that my interval training is helping with pacing and I do hope that it cuts my half time a bit.

Overall it was a fun run, running through the Wrigleyville neighborhood and running inside the corridors of the ball field. They have been renovating the area and it is looking quite nice.