Chicago Urbanathlon 2010

My BF and I signed, along with my BF's sister in law, to do the Chicago Urbanathlon. What? You have not heard of this? Don't worry, not very many people have. The Urbanathlon is sponsored by Men's Health and is a substantially smaller race. My BF actually did this last year and that was the only reason why I knew about this. Since my BF's sister in law wanted to do this, we figure it would be a good race to do. This race is the most unique race I have ever done and certainly kicked my butt, not once but several times over.

The Urbanathon is a 9+ mile run with six obstacles in between, sound easy enough? I thought so too, until I saw the obstacles in person. This urbanathlon is really targeted to the male population. When you sign up for the urbanathlon, unless you have ran and had a respectable time the year before, you are automatically signed up in a starting wave. My starting wave was 10. I realized the night before after looking at the assigned waves, that the waves are assigned according to elite status (if you have run the year before and met the minimum time for this start) and then, the next eight waves were all Males from the youngest age group first to the oldest men's age group being the second to last wave. That meant that wave 10 was ALL just solo female runners. (oh yea they had relay teams too, which in my mind, if you are going to run relay, you look lame running relay for this race since you basically only run 3 miles and do one obstacle) So naturally I was so pissed to find out that this race placed ALL of the females in the back. I was fuming and was totally ranting about how sexist this race was. I said they probably placed all of the girls in the back because they didn't think we could do the obstacles!

Then I told my BF that my goal was to beat as many guys as I could. So I actually ended up starting with my BF in his wave (he was wave 4) and when we reached the first obstacle, I realized why they put all of the girls in the back.

After you run three miles to Navy Pier (Start is at Columbus Dr.) you have to walk on top of the barricade like you would on a balance beam, then you have crawl over tires. In the picture, the tires don't look so bad,they kind of look like normal tires right? Wrong! I have no clue where they found these tires, but in person these tires were taller that I was! I tried hop and did not even reach the top. My BF actually hopped on top and basically had to pull me over it.

After the first obstacle, you run toward Museum campus and on the way you encounter the second obstacle which consists of hopping over two barricades and crawling under two barricades, there were six of these in all. This was probably my favorite obstacle.

Next, you run toward Soldier field, and this is where we met my new found worst enemy, the military hurdles. Actually they should not even be called hurdles because that implies that you can jump over them. These military hurdles were almost more than twice my height. Ideally you are supposed to be able to hoist yourself and then push yourself up, yes that would be ideal if my shoulders actually reached the hurdle. So my boyfriend had to bend down and put out his hands for me to hop on and then he basically threw me over these hurdles. There were six of these as well.

After these, we run up the stairs to McCormick place and then the next obstacles are a military crawl under nets, monkey bars, and then another military crawl under nets. If you miss a rung in the monkey bars or fall before getting to the end, you have to do the monkey bars over so I took it pretty slow on these so I wouldn't miss and fall!

The second to last obstacle is Soldier Field itself. They make you run up the steps of the stadium, run inside up through the stairs to the box area, back down the ramp and back up all of the ramps through Soldier field. Then they take you into the seating area of the stadium and you proceed to run up and down twice in the seating area. My legs were shaking after this one. Then we had two more miles until finish...

After two miles, what was left between us and the finish line, were two rows of cabs you have to hop over, a bus you have to scale, and a 10 foot wall.
I slide over the front of the cab (hint from my BF who did it last year) and scaling the bus was not bad because they have netting for you. It's just tough because the net is moving so much from the force of other climbers.

This race is actually pretty fun and it's unique in that it is not just running. Finishing this, I felt just as proud of myself as I would after a full marathon!

We finished this race in 1.27. (So I did manage to beat out a lot of guys!) But honestly, I could not have done this race without the help of my BF who so patiently waited for me through the obstacle and threw me over the huge tire and military hurdles. Also without him, I probably would have slowed down substantially in the end. So BF if you are reading this, thanks for your patience, support, endless encouragement and drive! You are the best!