As an avid long-distance runner in Chicago, this is my second time running in the Lakefront 10 Mile Run in Lincoln Park on April 13. I love to dedicate this race as the first race of the racing season. The racing season to me happens in the spring, summer, and fall. Winter is too chilly to race, which brings me to the topic of training during winter. It really is dreadful having to deal with the cold, wind, and snow and running on the indoor track to get through my training. However, there is nothing but a feeling of glory when running for this race, and realizing how the training during the winter has paid off. I will begin the story with how I trained, and then describing race day, and reflecting on my next steps.
To start off, I started training in January about 4-5 days a week. I would do a variety of workouts. I would have four types of workouts: speed days, long-distance, weights, and recovery. For speed days, I would run on an indoor track and do a few interval repeats or short bursts of speeds of 800 meters, 400 meters, and 1600 meters. For the long-distance training, I started off by running 5 miles. I would increase the distance during the month. For weights, I would bench press or do some machines in the gym. The last core workout would be a recovery day which I will run 3 miles usually at an easy pace so I won't be overworking myself.
I would repeat this training process during February while increasing my workout lengths, and I started to see some progression. By March, it started getting warmer and I started to move outside and doing most of my workouts there. I increased to working out 5-6 days out of the week, and by the end of March which was spring break, I peeked in my training. My long-distance consisted of 8-12 miles, my intervals were the same distance but faster, and I added more weights to my workout. During my peak of training, I did a 10-mile time trial on the lakefront path to see where I was at with my race since it was coming up in two weeks. After spring break, I started to decrease my workouts so I would be prepared and would not injure myself. I still ran but held back, I did between 7-9 miles for each distance workout, and the week of the race I made sure to carbo-load on spaghetti, get a good nights sleep and have my racing gear ready.
During race morning, I was up at 7 a.m. and the race started at 9 a.m. I arrived at the race at 8:20 a.m., warmed up, and went to the starting line 10 minutes before the gun went off. As soon as the gun went off, herds of runners took off, and I was immediately on race mode. I made sure to hold back some energy for the second half of the race, but I wanted to go out on a good start. By miles three and four, I started to do some burst of speed so I won't make sure I slowed down. While running, I got to see breathtaking views of the city skyline and the lake. When I got to mile five which was the halfway point, I started to make my move, I started to speed up since I knew I would slow down during the race. I stuck with a pack, and pass people along the way. By mile eight, I was getting tired and held back my speed for that mile since I knew the big hill known as Cricket Hill was right before the grand finish of running a lap on a track. Once I got to the hill I sprinted up and went down, and as soon as I got to the track on mile nine I was ready to finish and sprinted to the finish line. I got a time of 1:18:56, I beat my time in the previous year of 1:22.50.
This race serves as my first race in preparation for the Chicago Marathon I will be running in October. From this race, I have learned that my winter training has paid off, and I am on the right foot for improving myself as a runner. My next race I will be running is the Rock'n'Roll half marathon in July, followed by the Chicago Marathon.
