Chicago Marathon

We are back from Chicago and had a great time! Chicago is my favorite US city and I think it may be one of Dustin's favs too. If you have read anything about the Chicago marathon, it got warm! The alert codes go from green to yellow to red (consider stopping) to black (shut down race; make you stop). On Saturday it was at green. For the race Sunday they changed it to yellow because of higher temperature predictions than expected. Dustin had finished and I was still running when they changed it to red because the temperatures got too high. A good marathon race day temp is around 40-50 degrees. When I got my phone after I crossed the finish it was 83 degrees.
Dustin did really well and ran his second fastest marathon time. Although he was 8 minutes shy of qualifying for Boston I believe he would have done it if it weren't for the heat! You can tell in both our times exactly when it started heating up! I ran well until about mile 12 when we got outside of the city and the sun was directly above us. I decided to just finish and enjoy the scenery for the rest of the race. I started walking through the water stops because I was so thirsty. Water made me giggle and I looked forward to someone spraying us down with hoses at each water stop (towards the end). Is it bad that I started salivating at a spectator's sign stating "cold brew", just to realize that it actually said "go drew"? lol I never walk during a race but I really took advantage of the city block-long water stops and it showed in my time! I ran my worst marathon time by 16 minutes. Oh well, it was fun and I felt good at the end. I don't feel that bad afterwards; Dustin has a bit of a limp - he ran much harder than I did!
In Chicago we passed by Ryan Hall on Michigan Ave (so cool!), ate Chicago-style deep dish pizza at the original Chicago Uno pizzeria (where deep dish began), had a pasta dinner with Team World Vision, spent 3 hours at an expo, ran along Lake Michigan (sat morning easy 4 mile run), drank 312 while playing bag-o, and shopped along Michigan Ave (got a new purse - thanks Dustin!). It was a great weekend! I will have to upload pics after midterms are over.