I ran the Chicago Marathon on Sunday, finishing in an official time of 3:24:40 (3:24:36 by my watch, but I was scored based on gun time). It was a personal worst for the marathon distance, and yet I'm OK with it.
***
Oddly enough, running Chicago was in some way a late decision. I had entered Chicago in the fall of 2021, listing a goal time of 2:59 and applying for the American Development Program (ADP) based on my 3:03 at Richmond in 2019. At that time, I honestly believed that I'd be able to get into at least 3:05 shape by fall 2022. However, it was not to be - my training made it clear that I was nowhere near that fitness.
At that point, my training became more about the successful completion of a marathon training cycle and less about actually running the marathon. Given my nearly yearlong neurological/dystonia/whatever struggle, just getting through a marathon training cycle and finishing it in better shape than when I started would be a success.
Once I completed the cycle, I went back and forth over whether to do the marathon itself. As a friend pointed out, I hadn't run one in quite some time and there were benefits to just getting another one under my belt. So I decided that I would run Chicago if the weather wasn't really warm.
[My concerns about hot weather weren't about a "slow time' - I knew that even the best time possible for me would be far from my personal best. It's just that racing a hot marathon at any pace can be really hard on the body and I'd rather skip the race than have to deal with extended recovery.]
But as it turned out, Chicago had nearly perfect weather. So I hopped on a plane on Friday morning from DCA to MDW.
***
Things went mostly smoothly once I was in Chicago. I stayed at the Club Quarters on Wacker Drive, which was decently close to the race start/finish area, very close to a Chipotle, and also close to the FedEx store that had received my care package. [Like always, a week before leaving I shipped myself a box of snacks, throwaway clothing, gels, etc - much easier than lugging a suitcase around the airport.]
My room also got bonus points for a) being on the third floor (meaning I could always walk down the stairs on race morning if the elevators were taking too long) and b) having a view of my favorite building in Chicago - Marina Towers (technically two buildings)
After getting myself situated in the hotel and eating some Chipotle, I headed over to the expo to pick up my bib. Just like last time, getting to the expo required a ridiculous amount of walking and was quite busy once I arrived.
I picked up my bib and went over to the solutions table to ask if I could switch bibs and move back out of the ADP corral. I had received a letter from the ADP program telling me that all ADP bibs were gun time only, no chip - thus I would need a different, non-ADP bib if I wanted to move back a few corrals and not add several minutes to my time.
However, the solutions table didn't really understand the issue. After the fourth conversation involving a very nice person explaining to me as if I was a very new runner how timing chips on bibs worked, I gave up trying to get a new bib. I'd have to go with this one.
***
Saturday was all relaxing and Chipotle and stretching, plus a two mile shakeout run on the Riverwalk - not surprisingly, this is where everyone was doing their shakeouts, apparently. My legs felt very fresh (good) but also very stiff (bad). This was the same conundrum I've been dealing with for some time - the more I run and exercise, the less stiff and locked up my body is. I decided not to worry about the stiffness too much - 26 miles would hopefully be enough to loosen stuff up.
Sunday morning I woke up at 4:15 am local time to eat and start stretching/mobilizing. I left my room at 5:45 to walk down to the nearest starting area security checkpoint - almost a mile away. I was worried about a long wait, but getting there a bit after 6 was early enough that I only had to wait about 30 seconds before getting inside and navigating my way over to the ADP tent. Once there, I sat for a while, read my phone some, wished some friends good luck, and snacked some more.
About 6:45 I headed out to do a shake-out jog on a nearby paved path. As it turned out, this was the designated warm-up area for both the elites and the ADP corral, and that's how I ended up jogging loops for about 8 minutes behind a group of world class Kenyan runners, bemusedly reading the names pinned to their backs.
- The weather was absolutely perfect - temperatures in the mid to high 40s, dew point in the low 40s. It really doesn't get much better than that.
- I've thought some about what I might have done different to prevent the hamstring tightness/burning/leg locking. (I should mention that all three are things I have been experiencing regularly, though they are generally provoked by rest, not running). I suspect that part of it may have been my taper. I used the same last week of taper I've used before all of my Sunday marathons, and it definitely left my legs fresh. However, I also got extremely stiff, despite stretching twice a day. I wonder if I might have been better off doing a bit more mileage this last week and accepting the tradeoff of less fresh legs that were looser. This theory is supported by the fact that my body is much less stiff two days post-marathon than it was the day before the marathon.
The other possible cause might have been medication timing. For the last few months I've been taking a medication called Artane that keeps my legs loose and allows me to run. I take it in the morning on the days before I run. On race morning, I took it at 4:30 am (I was worried that if I didn't take it at my normal time, I'd forget to take it). However, the race didn't start until 7:30 am. I'll confess I don't know quite what Artane's half life is, but I'm wondering if it was starting to wear off during the race. Who knows (my doctor probably does, so I'll ask him). In the next few months the plan is for me to try some other medications that should work better than Artane, so if that's the cause then that's an easy fix. - Post-race I met up with two Running Ahead forumites - as always, it was great to meet Dave and Ian - two people I've previously only interacted with online. That's one of the best things about running and racing - all the friends from various regions and walks of life.
- Yes, my Garmin measured 27.18 miles for this race. No, it wasn't because the race course was long or because I didn't run the tangents. Garmins.Are.Not.Perfect. And mine was even more off because I set it to "smart" data recording rather than "every second" for this race since this Garmin's battery life seems to be getting shorter and shorter and I wanted to make sure the device lasted the race.
- A friend of mine usually posts something along the lines of "any day you get to finish a marathon is a good day" after his marathons. I think I understand that statement a lot better than I used to.
It is frustrating to have lost something that was so special to me, and I miss how my running stride used to feel relaxed and flowing and rhythmical and how things like timing mats and dark underpasses weren't major challenges requiring considerable thought to navigate. At the same time, I'm really fortunate to have the privilege (financially and physically) to jet off to random cities to run marathons and eat buffalo wings after. I get that now, in a way I didn't before.
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