16K - Chicago Lakefront Trail

Loren and I are now in Chicago for me to attend the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting and present a poster. We left the kids in my parents' capable hands, and the house and dogs in the care of our awesome house sitter, and here we are.

The meeting didn't have much going on until 1pm today, so today was the ideal time for my 16K. I was thinking to do 16-18km, but my legs were definitely still a bit tired from yesterday's speed work, even though it was short, probably because of the fast 200s that I haven't done in a while. So at about 10k today I was pretty sure 16k was a good distance rather than 18k. The weather was good for fall here; 40F (4C) and windy. The wind was in my face on the first 8k, at a steady 19kph (12mph) plus gusts, which was definitely enough to slow me down and tired me out a bit. The lakeside scenery was beautiful though! For my international readers, a bit about Chicago: though in the middle of the country, it's next to a huge lake (Lake Michigan), and is the 3rd largest city in the US, behind New York and Los Angeles. It's pretty cold here in the winter, much colder than Salt Lake, though it doesn't snow as much as in Salt Lake. It's also famous for being windy here, and the city's nickname is "the windy city". But in October, windy or not, it's lovely --- at least it was today. And it's also only about 180m (590ft) above sea level, and very flat, perfect for RW. The Lakefront Trail here is an amazing paved trail along the lakeshore, and it's something like 20 miles (32km) long, adequate for almost any kind of training.

The trail was busy today with tons of runners, walkers, and cyclists; the runners were pretty good, as I only passed a handful in the 16K. During the first 8K into the wind, my legs felt decent, though it was nice to stop at the turnaround and get a few photos. I noticed the wind at my back right away when I turned around, and in fact I managed to negative split the workout, probably due to the tail wind; my legs were tired then. The first 500m was NOT right (3:45? not that slow...) and neither was the last 500m (2:42? no way!) so I figure that along the river walk my Garmin had a bit of trouble. But close enough.

I finished in 1:41:45 for 6:21/km and had splits of 32:00 (5K), 51:19 (8K), 1:03:53 (10K), 1:35:35 (15K); the last 8K was 1:41:45-51:19 = 50:26 for a negative split :).

Garmin data here.