Half marathon report, and now I rest for a few days

I ran the Chicago Monster Dash Half Marathon on Sunday, Halloween. It was a fun race with lots of great people/costume-watching. It was also a nice diversion to have after getting formally laid off from my job on Friday. I figure next Halloween will be more fun and less depressing. Actually, it was pretty fun trick-or-treating with our little dinosaur on Sunday.

Anyway, here's my race report:

The Chicago Monster Dash Half is my last big race for 2010, since I'm 20 weeks pregnant tomorrow and starting to slow down a bit. The course for the half was altered at the last minute because of Obama coming to town for some pre-election stuff, so we started downtown and ran north along the lakefront instead of the out-and-back course to the south of the Loop. I'm guessing in the course organizers' haste the course measurement wound up a little off, because lots of folks' Garmins were registering 13.4 and 13.5 -- I know the mile markers were certainly off!

20 weeks preggo means this baby girl is midway cooked. It's the most preggo I've been in attempting a half, and I had no expectations to hit the 2:16 half time I did last month when I was 12 weeks preggo. I wound up running Sunday's race in two hours and 27 minutes, six minutes of which is due to a preggo-forced potty break. I never, ever make bathroom stops during races, not even marathons, but man, I had to bow to the body this time. So overall, if you take out the potty break and the Obama-lengthened course, I think I did pretty good.

I ran with two friends, Andie and Tonya, for the first few miles. Andie dressed up as a Star Trek character -- she looked awesome in her Trekkie dress, black tights and upswept hair. She even had fake eyelashes on. She looked hot. I shoulda worn a bumble bee costume, which was Andie's idea, but since I got laid off from my job on Friday I wasn't spending money on a costume this year. She took off when I had to make my potty stop at mile 4 and I stuck it out with Tonya, who is making a strong comeback an ankle injury. She ran ahead of me a bit, and then I left her around mile 8 and put on my iPod to get the rest of the race done. Normally I don't run with music except on a treadmill, but heck, I had a good mix going, thanks to my awesome hub staying up late the night before to put a bunch of music back on my iPod, which forever seems to lose songs.

Raceday temps were in the 40s, light wind, and it was sunny -- just great race weather. My pelvic bones/ligaments ached as I ran, but didn't outright hurt, so I figured keeping to about an 11 minute-mile pace or just under was about right for the day. Toward the end I decided to try and make up for my potty break and started picking runners off here and there. I felt kind of mighty passing folks with my belly protruding, heh heh. Figured it's my last big race for awhile, might as well go not all out, but give it some gas.

Unfortunately, I realized along the course as photogs were snapping my picture that my belly was kind of sticking out and you could see some pasty white skin. Can't wait to see those pics. Pregnancy ain't pretty, folks!

That's about it. I had a ton of fun. Unfortunately my head cold from the previous two days transformed into a wicked chest cold post-race, so I now sound like Typhoid Mary. I'm really not too sore, though, which is nice. Then I went home, stuffed my face and fell asleep.This is my typical post-race activity.