Good luck to all the Chicago runners, but especially darkwave given the health hell she has gone through. Let's see Ian and DW run  3:0X and Dave come in at 3:1X!

Yes! Good luck all. Hope someone will track them and post here tomorrow, always fun to follow that

All the best wishes to Chicago racing crew tomorrow!

I thought if I should put anything in writing re my London marathon race, it's a marathon number 26 for me, so, I thought maybe nothing new to say. But, I think, Santa Rosa one and and this, London one was some different, especially London race. There are few drastically new things that happened that made this race very different from others.

1. Weight change

For years and years I was in the range of 157-165 lbs. Whatever I did, mileage wise, diet wise, the weight was mostly the same - at the peak of my shape I was closer to 157, but mostly I was 162-163 (at some finish photos sometimes I could even see my small belly . The July happened, some stress and I lost about 10 lbs in less than couple of months. Then, for some important for me reasons I started to follow intermittent fasting with only breakfast and dinner (no lunch) and lose another 10 lbs in less than two months. Now I am scared and I am really thin and that what scares me - I do not want to lose any weight anymore. Oh, btw, I almost stopped eating anything that contains sugar - no Coke for 3 months and coffee with one packet of Stevia.

And another thing - three weeks before the race I ran 10 @mp effort and felt incredible the whole way. I was elated. Then I last a few pounds again and two weeks before race ran 10 @mp again (I basically repeated what I did before Santa Rosa) and I felt incredibly weak - I ran few first miles at good pace and then could not get my pace under 7 mpm. I was scared that my drastic weight loss made me weaker than minimum threshold...

2. The last week of these two marathons were not conventional for me either. I used to do classical last week, with running almost all the days of the week but only about 4 miles the day before race day. For Santa Rosa last day I ran was Thursday and no running on Friday and Saturday. Didn't make any negative difference - I felt even stronger the second half than I felt during the first half.

For London, last day I ran was Tuesday and I only ran 1.5 miles on Saturday because I just wanted to test how my injured rib was feeling. And it felt awful - I sprinted few times and the fastest I could run was 6:30. When JMac saying I was trying to deceive him - I was not - I felt terrible. But, on the race day - it didn't feel that bad, seriously. It the rib felt terrible again at night and next day - I could not sleep on my left side - it was really painful... And yes, I walked 11+ miles on Frida and some on Saturday because I could not allow my daughter be alone in the new city and my legs were hurting on Saturday and on Sunday morning. If you think I was lying, I am sorry, but I was not.

And yes, none of the nights in London I slept even 5 hours. I really underestimated time zone switch. I might try melatonin next time - I wanted to try it this time but forgot to buy it in US and then could not find it in London.

3. Neither for Santa Rosa nor for London I didn't even care about diet, carbo loading or whatever it is. Just ate when I could (especially in London with all those unknown places and a lot of walking. I ate two cups of fast prepared oatmeal, yogurt and banana 3.5 hours before the start and then one more banana maybe an hour before the start - that's all.

The cool part about the start, the group where I started were right behind the elite group, so, there was some congestion at the start, but not to much. Oh, another fun fact - I was given very interesting bib number - 906. One thing is such a low bib number for such a big race and the second thing - if you turn 906 upside down you still will get 906.

First 3-4 miles are pretty cool, new place, I think miles 2 and 3 are downhill and I ran them really fast. The idea was the same as for Santa Rosa - do minimum fast for the first half and then do my best for the second half. I was at 6:47 avg pace by half, I think and for sub 2:57 I knew I have to run the rest of the miles at least at 6:44 or faster. And I managed to do that for miles 14, 15, 16 and 17. But then mile 18 I had the same effort but only 6:58 pace, I applied more power and concentration and ran next two miles at 6:41 and 6:37, but that was it - the effort was there but the pace drifted to 6:50+.

I realized that sub 2:57 is not happening, but, honestly, I was pretty happy at that point, knowing that I will have my sub 3 in London, at major marathon. And, I will be honest, I was pretty sure on Sunday morning that it will take a miracle to run sub 3. Honestly...

And I had such a focus when I was running. When I was walking back to my hotel, part of that pat was along the marathon course and I was able to see the places and the things I was running along - and when I was running I really didn't see them , all I saw was the street, nothing on the sides That was hilarious to me

All in all, I liked the marathon course, I liked the crowd support, really liked it - much more dense than in Boston, but that logical - London is probably 10 times bigger than Boston. But that also explains why in Boston, when you going back to a hotel, every second person on the streets congratulate you. In London, for the whole two miles I was walking back to my hotel, only 3 people congratulated me Ha-ha...

And I enjoyed immensely meeting Mikkey. 11 years of knowing the man virtually and finally meeting him. I was expecting him to be a different person than we all know him here, but he was even softer than I thought - I didn't know Brits could be that soft and such great listeners. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. I would probably spend even more time talking to him, but his train was leaving (or, actually, he was probably got tired of me talking with my accent  ) and the moment he left, I realized we didn't make a photo! Damn! Ok, will do it in Boston for sure, but still - what the heck!

192-193 beat music proves being a huge help for me - if you check my last 4 marathons, they all have average spm of 192 - for the whole distance - all 4 of them! If you check the marathons before that, they are all over the place, 193, 195, even 197 spm and they are not faster than the last two .

I read Steve's race report. Tough... Really tough read. Congrats on finishing your first! But in all my 26 marathons I have never experienced anything like that, way too much drama for one race, seriously. I think you are over-analyzing it way too much. Just make a short stop, 6-8 weeks from this marathon and run again. Just do this 26 miles race a non-event. Don't overthink it. Run it in more relaxed way. You ran it at 3:35, you know you can run it at that pace - race it at 3:25 next time - don't put too much pressure on yourself - run it making some small changes to the way you ran it last time. Cramps??? Never had them, but I am more than sure that it somehow relates to diet, make some research, do the changes, try it, run it. Run 26 miles during training, many people say it is stupid, but "many people" is not you - try your way, try things you want to try - do not listen to "may other people". Make it less stressful, run at least two marathons a year, spring and fall - do not spend years preparing for something like marathon - find your own thing that works for you.

Congrats to Marby too! I didn't realize you were running marathon. Though, sub 3:30 for you is just a training run

Removed bib numbers.

Steve - I'll adjust that soon, I'm pushing an update to Java 17 and it will go together with that. Though you will have to edit the activity on Strava and change the activity type to race for it to work.

Cal - Thanks for the race report, it's always nice to see what different people find important to report.

Darkwave/Dave/Ian - Once again best of luck in Chicago!

Mark - Sorry to hear you had a rough patch. I guess age is catching up with you, but glad to hear you're on the other side of it.

me - Good week. What I love the most about this week is that it was boring. Boring is the absolute best kind of week when it comes to running.

A couple of good workouts, some nice strength training, celebrated some much needed weight loss, nobody in the family got worse in the health department. Especially the last point makes this a great week!

Weekly for period: From: 10/03/2022 To 10/09/2022

Total distance: 46.84mi

Might as well not even look at DWs first 5K, it's like she walks it to warm up 

15k

DW 1h11 3h21 pace

Ian 1h05 3h05 pace

Dave through 10k in 47:17 3h19 pace

Half

DW 1h41 3h22 pace

Dave 1h39:55 3h19 pace

Ian 1h33 3h06:41 pace