Blog of Josh Hall

Kallie and I drove to Chicago on Oct 15th for the Urbanathlon on the 16th.  We were a little scared about the 7.5 hour drive since our car has been giving us so many (expensive) problems.  It lasted though, and hopefully we didn’t shave off too many days of it’s life.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn in the West Loop, which was a nice short walk to the starting line.  when we got to our room, it was a 2 double bed suite.  Whenever something is not as it should be, I let Kallie be in charge.  I’m too nice and just suck it up and take the hand I was dealt.  Kallie goes to the front desk and she gets us a room with a king bed, the only “downside” is it’s a handicap room.  So, where we asked for a different room because we’re tall and need a larger bed, we got a larger bed, but the room has light switches and counters at about half-height.  The bathroom was just a big tiled room with a curtain and shower head off to the side.  I’ve never seen that before.  It was very mental hospital-ish.  Whatever though.

The race was fun, but I didn’t get the time I wanted due to muscle cramps around mile 7.  It took me nearly an hour to finish the last 2 miles.  It was frustrating and embarrassing.  I don’t know what caused them.  It wasn’t unusually cold and I should have had all the nutrients I needed.  I hadn’t had anything like that come up in my training.  When I got to the finish line, as I was jumping off the first taxi hood, my right calf cramped and I almost fell on the ground since I could use it to balance when I landed.  I also couldn’t get up over the second cab until it stopped, so I just stood there stretching and rubbing it, while all these bystanders looked at me.  Ugh.  I think the picture to the left sums it up pretty well.  Even after the race, just sitting on the ground drinking water, my muscle was cramping.  Ridiculous.  Nothing I could do about it though, and I raised a bunch of money for the Living Ministry, so it wasn’t about me, it was a race for the ministry.  Now it was time to have a great weekend in Chicago with my wife.

So we were going to meet up with Kallie’s cousin, Julia, for lunch.  Julia was thinking a place called “The Girl and The Goat” (check out my review) but they were only open for dinner.  She also had to work, so that limited our time.  What we decided to do was Kallie and I would go to eat dinner, then come see a show, where Julia worked, and then we’d get drinks afterward with her.  I’ll tell you more in the reviews of the restaurant and the play “Detroit” at the Steppenwolf theatre (review here), but to sum it up, we had an awesome day.  So great.  We couldn’t have planned it better ourselves.  THANKS, Julia!  Sunday morning we got some fruit sushi / frushi at Orange before heading out for home.  We had eaten there last year and thought it was so good that we made a point to go back this year.  If you’re in the Chicago area, I’d recommend it.

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Tags: car, chicago, detroit, food, fruit sushi, frushi, gary sinese, girl and the goat, holiday inn, Kallie, orange, race, restaurant, review, steppenwolf, trip, urbanathlon, west loop