I ran two 5Ks this weekend. So, yay me.

Saturday was the Race to Wrigley. It was also the day I was supposed to do a long run, so Shaun and I ran the 3 miles from our neighborhood down to Wrigleyville and then when we got there 15 minutes early ran a half-mile down the already-closed Addison and back to the starting line, just in time for the National Anthem and then the start of the race.

The concept of the run sounds cool—you finish by running through Wrigley Field—but it turns out you don't actually ever see the field or anything. Right at the end of the run you cut through the ground-level concourse of Wrigley—that is, running through a concrete corridor lined with closed concession stands and smelling faintly of power-washed beer spills. Oh, and with scary steel beams down the middle. Oh well, the t-shirt is cute.

Even after running 4 miles, Shaun pushed me a little and we finished somewhere under 30 minutes. I don't have an official time because the run, unusually, offered you a choice of whether to spend an extra $5 to get a timing chip and I elected to save that money. My robot shoes say I ran 3.05 miles* in 28:56, for a pace of 9'28"/mi.

Afterwards, Shaun wasn't going to run anymore as he had touch football later and my hands were full of post-race banana and Gatorade, so I rode the train with Shaun, dropped off my stuff at home, and then went back out for another two miles to get my long run total up to nine miles. I think those last two miles were a mistake. The train ride was just long enough to let everything start to tighten up and I didn't do enough stretching before I went back out. My left ankle and heel were pretty sore right away. And then that evening I went out to Schaumburg for the Laugh Out Loud show and it was a CIF show, which meant everything ran a little long, and then it was also the last Saturday of the month, which meant there was the free Jam after the show. All fun stuff, but it meant I didn't get home until 1:30 AM.

All of which to say that this morning when I got up at 6:30 AM to go to Ravenswood Run I was in enough pain that I wasn't sure if I was going to even walk the course at all. But Erica has been starting to run on her lunch breaks with Shannon and was going to run the 5K as her first for-reals running 5K. She's doing 3-1 run/walk intervals and so I thought I'd at least start the run with her and then I could always bail and just walk back to the finish. But I warmed up enough, and was able to switch up my running gait to favor my ankle a bit, and we finished the race in 38:48. I'm super-proud of Erica. And it was great to see all the folks we ran into at the race: Becky and Dori, Paul**, Chip, and Trent and Heather.

My robo-shoes say I ran 3.27 mi on 4/25/2010 at 8:02 AM with a pace of 12'39"/mi. The official results say:

Time: 38:48
Pace: 12:30
Overall place: 2642 / 2929
Place in sex: 1278 / 1339
Place in division (M, 40-44): 141 / 149

* I know, not quite 5K. Robot shoes are not 100% accurate.
** Great time, there, Paul.

Update: Gena found this great picture of Erica and I by Steve Stearns:

We saw Chip Aucoin on the route and he gave us a shout out on his running blog. Run, Chip, run.