Race Report: Chicago Marathon

If you're looking for race details that might be useful in race planning for the Chicago Marathon, you can find it here. Otherwise, this is just a rambling of my race day.
 
A Year of Anticipation

A year ago, D registered for the Chicago Marathon through the guaranteed entry based on his speedy marathon time; meanwhile, K and I put our names in the hat for the non-guaranteed lottery. As luck would have it, both of us got in!

16 15 Weeks of Training

I had intended to do a 16-week block of training, but only in hindsight, I realized that I had miscalculated the number of weeks, and had done only 15 weeks of training. Oops!

These were the BEST 15 weeks! I did all the training up to the 20-miler in New Zealand. I absolutely loved running in New Zealand. There are no natural predators on the run, so I didn't have to carry a bear spray. There are so few people on the trails, so I had the whole trail to myself. Sometimes, I don't even see a single soul for two to three hours. I loved "sightrunning" - sightseeing while running.

It was winter in New Zealand, and I was skiing four days a week. I had to balance ski days and run days in order to not destroy the legs. The training plan definitely leaned on the low mileage side, but I really only had two days for running -- a mid-week double run day and a Saturday long run. Sunday is what I coined "fetal position" day when I laid in bed or on the couch or on the floor for hours clutching my tired legs.

Pre-Race

Three weeks out from the Chicago Marathon, I nailed my pacing for my longest training run, the 20-miler, by negative splitting with a kick in the last mile.

Isn't it the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?

From there, I had my heart set on running the first 20 miles in the marathon at the same pace, and see what happens in the last 6.2 miles. Being able to kick at the end, I thought my plan was realistic. But as the race day forecast solidified to high-10's/low-20's, sunny, and humid, I was starting to doubt my plan.

I flew into Chicago on Friday. As soon as I landed, I could feel the heat and the humidity which I wasn't accustomed to neither. I took the train into the city and found my way to the hotel. The shuttle to the expo was literally right next door. What luck! I managed to pick up my packet at the expo at the McCormick Place relatively efficiently, and joined the Oiselle Volee runners for dinner on the Magnificent Mile. And on Saturday, I generally tried to stay off my feet, and never ventured farther than the immediate two blocks around the hotel. 


The Big Day

D, K, and I are all in different corrals with different starting times. My corral closes at 7:45am and my wave starts at 8:00am. I left the hotel with plenty of time for the twenty minute walk to the start line. I heard the elite start and the first wave start shortly after, then we wait and wait. In hindsight, since I didn't have any checked bags and I didn't have to use the loo, I could've just arrived right before 7:45am and walked right into my corral.

I started off just a tad too fast, clocking 34:00 (10:57/mile) for the first 5K. At the time, I couldn't tell what my pace was except at the mile markers because the GPS signal was all scrambled due to the Chicago highrises and underground passages. It was both a blessing and a curse that the race organizer had bumped me up to a faster corral (for unknown reasons) than the estimated time that I had entered. On the positive side, I got to start at a cooler time of day. On the down side, I had to really try to hold back, run my own race, and let all the runners pass me. Unfortunately, it was still faster than I had planned.

By the time I hit halfway point, I can start to feel the pounding from the asphalt. Perhaps I could have foreseen this because most of my training was done on hard-packed dirt trails in New Zealand, though I didn't think I would start to feel the fatigue this early in the marathon. As my pace slowed, I also started to feel the heat from the sun. I've lost all ability to calculate time or pace, which has never happened to me before.

My slowest pace was 49:52 (16:03/mile) between 35K and 40K. This must be the notorious "wall". A Oiselle Volee runner tapped me on the shoulder as I was crawling and cheered me on. I was able to pick up the pace for the last couple kilometres and returned the favour by cheering on another Oiselle Volee runner at the last hill with 800m to go.

Not my best marathon. In fact, it was my worst marathon in terms of finish time. Interestingly, it was one of my favourite one because I had the best time through the training journey, had a chance to do it with friends, and I may have learned a few lessons on running a marathon!