Race Recap: Bastille Day 8K

You would think that a Bastille Day race would be a bit more, you know French?  Instead we got shirts with stereotypical mustaches. Last year they at least gave out little French flags at the finish line.

This is what I picture for Bastille Day

All and all though it was a decent race.  I heard the 5K course was a bit goofy and crossed back on itself.  The 8K course wasn't too bad.  It got bunched up in spots since we were sharing the lakeront path with everyone else.  We had a weird loop back at mile 2 that seemed to confuse everyone and put us in the path of oncoming bikers, but besides one biker yelling at us, and being subsequently told to chill out by someone else it was pretty uneventful.

Picture stolen from courtesy of Maggie

This was another race that would feature the trio of myself, Chris, and Jennifer.  I arrived at the race site and found Jennifer and her mom.  We then looked around for the gear check area for the blogger meet up.  We also had a couple other friends coming to the race that we needed to meet up with as well.  Eventually we found the spot and later along came Maggie and Amanda.  We took our obligatory photo, talked a little shop, then headed towards the race start.  I lined myself in the middle of the 7:00 min pace area.  I wasn't entirely sure I was going to keep this pace with it being a little warm and the sun still being out.  This was not a goal race and I just wanted to run strong, but not over do it.

Once the race started I found myself busting out of the starting shoot with my usually enthusiasm, but calmed myself down before I over did things.  I spent the majority of the race running comfortably hard.  It was enough that my body was like "Hey let's take a short walk" but not hard enough that I was breathing too hard.  In the end it all worked out and I broke the weird PR thing I had going on where my 10K PR pace was faster than my 8K PR pace... they are now exactly the same!

I'm happy with the result and wasn't even too sore the next day so I went for a Runch - I also did this because I knew I wouldn't be running after work since I was meeting up with Maggie to see Robert Plant live in a free concert at Taste of Chicago.

After the race I found Jennifer's mom and we and rested and stretched waiting for everyone else to finish.  A little later Chris came along, then I spotted Maggie and Amanda so i rejoined them for conversation.  We then went and got some beers and chatted some more.  I also got to meet Britt who had come and found us.  After awhile Jennifer texted me that they were going to get froyo which sounded good for a post race cool down so off I went.

Bastille Day is a nice convenient race for me, but next year I want more croissants or pain au chocolat, merci!