Anybody Else Here Doing Chicago? (Read 1125 times)

Tough, tough day out there in Chicago. High temps 80-82 degrees, and humidity in the 50% range. I hope everyone makes it to the finish safe and sound. Results so far: Marcus - 3:04:40 heelgrad92 - 3:18:55 (BQ under tough conditions ... awesome stuff!) Ribbie - 3:53:25 Tcoyle - 4:43:48 (congrats on your first marathon!) Addie - 6:39:39 (congrats on your first marathon!) Frank4 was through the half in 1:34:49, but there aren't any other splits listed. Hope you're ok dude.

Well I'm back at my hotel room after running (if you can call it that) it. My training was somewhat subpar due to a knee injury.....as in have only run twice in the last 6 weeks with a long run of 9 miles. I know, should have dropped out and did another better trained but this was my first marathon and had the hotel reservations, blah blah blah. So made the usual rookie mistake, I originally had been hoping for around 4:10 given my half marathon times and my previous training which had been decent prior to the knee owie. Was on pace at the halfway point for about 4:30 but definitely took it out too fast and blew up big time in the second half. Major muscle cramps started at mile 15 and had to run-walk (with more and more walking as it went on). Came in a little under 5:30. *sigh* Well a good learning experience I guess. I did notice that lots of people were cramping up today, probably because of the heat. Now I gotta go eat, hooray!

Thanks Everyone. It was rough at times. I hurt my foot in the last few weeks of training, and it reared its ugly head about 15 miles in. The crowd support was amazing. The support from all the RA people made this 18 weeks the best ever. You guys rock.

Wow, what a race! It was hot, but not as bad as last year, and I was determined not to be denied my BQ. I live on the coast in North Carolina, where I have to run in 98% humidity pretty much every day, so I am more acclimatized than the runners training in Michigan. One trick I learned is to drink the Gatorade and dump the cold water on your head from the very first aid station until the last. They had more aid stations this year, and that was a big help in keeping my core temperature from getting too high. I would say they learned their lesson from last year. I was able to stay with the 3:20 pacer for the whole race and so I had very even splits with the exception of the last mile when I kicked up the pace considerably. I was irritated that here I was, running the race of my life in tough conditions, and there was a guy in a full length Vegas Elvis costume running about 30 seconds ahead of me. So I kicked it up a notch and took out Elvis (though I am still impressed with his performance in long pants on a day like today. For the first time in a marathon, I never had any cramps and it made a huge difference. I am still walking around today, actually feeling good. Of course it could be the two oxycontin I took 30 seconds after the race....

I ran the marathon in 4:46:15 today. It was my first and was quite the experience. The fans are so awesome and encouraging! I don't think I have been so excited as I was when I turned the corner and saw the finish line!

Dude I saw you! I actually made eye contact with you and smiled. I was wearing a blue singlet and black shorts and I have a bunch of ink on my arms. You had to have seen me. Personally I didn't think the heat was that bad. I got some nice rays on the second 1/2 of the course. I just heard it was 85 by noon. Does anyone know what my BQ time is? 3:10? I am too lazy to look it up. 3:20.

Didn't recognize you at the time. Maybe if I saw you from the back like your profile pic I think you may have been the first person to react to the sign cause I just started holding it up around that time. It's surprisingly difficult to pick people out of the crowd after staring at an endless stream of faces all day. I did manage to spot 2 other people I know though.

Didn't recognize you at the time. I think you may have been the first person to react to the sign cause I just started holding it up around that time.

Well I did see it and you. I think you were wearing sunglasses if I am not mistaken. But honestly when I saw it I didn't make the connection that it was somebody from RA or I would have stopped and said hi. By then sub 3 was out the window so 3-4 extra seconds to say hi wouldn't have mattered much to be. I swear that strectch down Michigan Avenue seemed like it was 10 miles! Thanks for coming out though. I was thanking people left and right coming down the home stretch probably to take my mind off of how slow I was running.

I just heard it was 85 by noon.

Hee hee. Since I was out there till roughly 3:00...it was brutal in the afternoon. We passed a bank that showed 92 on it's sign. I have a GREAT tan to show off today at work.