A chance to "Finish on the Fifty", part one

The barber was surprised when I asked him to cut my hair short.  It was four days before the Soldier Field 10 mile race, and I wanted to get used to running with a cap on.  Even though I had tried running with a mesh cap, it was a sweaty experience.  I figured: less hair, less discomfort.  Besides slathering on the sunblock, I wanted to be prepared for a sunny day.

This was the only new thing I was going to try before a race.  Even though it was my first 10 miler, some things would remain the same:

1)    I’d go to bed early and get up early.  I’d have to.  The start time was at 7am CST, and I had a long train ride down to the South Loop.

2)    I’d take a long walk to the race site.  The Roosevelt and State L stop is a mile from Soldier Field, so the walk was part of the warm up process.

Actually, there was one other tweak to my training: no pasta the night before-just a vegetable salad with broccoli, etc, and nothing more solid to eat than a small cup of yogurt on the day of the race.  The last thing I wanted to do during the race was to dash off the course to use the can.  After all, running speeds up a lot of things-your heart rate, your breathing, and um…certain lower gastrointestinal functions.

Most of my training had consisted of weekend and weeknight runs of eight miles.  I did manage one 10 miler that took an hour and fifty-seven minutes.  Was that enough preparation for a 10 miler?  I say yes, with these rationalizations:

-  Almost all my running was on pavement.

-  The race course would include some stretches of dirt pathway, and ..

-oh yes!-the finish would be on the grass turf of Soldier Field. 

-And of course, running in a crowd tends to be a big motivator with me