therealcherish

In my list of 35 events over the course of a year (give or take), I finally crossed off event number 2! The Rudolph Ramble in Lincoln Park (Chicago) was my first 8K ever! Luckily, there was a Midwest “heat wave” that left us with temperatures around 40 degrees that morning. AWESOME! I am learning the art of layering for outdoor activity, but that day my base tech layers were:

Nike Element Shield Running Tights

Nike Pro Hyperwarm Crew 3.0 Top

Topped it all off with the first red t-shirt I found (keep it festive/match the bib) and some RMHC socks!

The race was tough. Its the furthest distance I’ve ever attempted to run. I kept ended up with a run-walk pace that was all over the place for the first two miles (leaving me burned out by mile 2. My friends recommended I start with a 3:2 (3 min run, 2 min walk) alternating pace, but I thought that seemed too easy, so I set my shiny new TomTom Runner for a 6:2 interval. Boy was I wrong. That did not go so well. I spent the final 3 miles doing the math in my head to convert my 6:2 setting to a 3:1 setting, which I also found pretty difficult to maintain. At the finish line my coworkers were waiting and cheering.

Considering I had just started running less than 2 months prior, I didn’t care about being ranked 1,031 out of 1,113… I was more than satisfied with the simple accomplishment of actually finishing it!

I signed up for another 8K in March, so we can see how much I am able to improve my time and consistency of pace by then…