I’ve never done the Cinco de Miler before, but this year the shirt was a cool design and the finishers medal was a piñata that was also a bottle opener. I’ll never use it as a bottle opener, but that’s the kind of thing that gets my lizard brain to sign up for a race.

Erica needed the car, so I decided to ride my bike down to the race. It was drizzling on my way down and I amended one of my standard training rules. The old rule is that any run in the rain, no matter how short or how light the rain, is automatically a hardqore run. Biking the rain, I decided yesterday, is double that. Double-Hardqore!

I was, in fact, pretty chilly by the time I got down to the race start at Soldier Field, and my shoes were pretty soaked. But the wind abated a bit as the race started and it was a nice run—not personal best, but only a few minutes off. But as I was getting my post-race tamale and Modelo, the wind was picking up again, pretty strong from the north and I wondered how my ride home was going to be. “Hard” turned out to be the answer. At one point on the stretch along the lake just north of Ohio street, I was in my lowest gear going 6 miles an hour, like I was climbing a hill. The Windy City, indeed.

Time: 47:53
Overall place: 902 / 3189
Place in Sex: 557 / 1143
Place in Division (M45-49): 58 / 119