Notes
After training for over 7 months for this race, it was very hard to believe that I had to lay everything on the line at 7:30 AM in Chicago. Every mile, every workout, every lifting session was to prepare for this one day. And while I did fall a bit short of my 2:46 goal, I cannot help but look at this result as a huge success.
Leading up to the race, I was incredibly anxious and excited days before I even started the trip to Chicago. I had never run a marathon before so I had no idea really what to expect. I’ve heard the stories of hitting the wall and all the little things that could go wrong during the race. But, once I got to the expo and toured around Chicago, I stopped dwelling on what could be a potential problem in the race and started to just enjoy the experience.
As I started walking to the start corrals, I casually checked my watch out. It has been teetering on the brink of destruction the past few months and is literally held together with electrical tape. When I accidentally bumped the side, it showed the battery life was down to 62%, even though I had charged it overnight for this morning. In any normal race or training run, that would have been fine. But for running a marathon? I was not so sure it would make it without dying on me. Not cool.
Ready to start!
Ten minutes before the race started, I tossed my junk sweatpants and sweatshirt to the side of the road and joined my friends in the corral. We started to inch forward after the National Anthem, and then, the start rang through the streets of Chicago.
The Race:
I usually do my race recaps all in one entry, but this is a different beast. One, it is a marathon, which means 26.2 miles of stories. And two, it is the reason I started a blog site. So, here’s the breakdown of the race:
Start to 10K:
At the start, I was really, really, really concerned about going out too fast. Other than starting a race directly up a hill, I don’t think I have ever gone out slower than 5:50. In the past year, I don’t think I’ve started slower than 5:30. In a marathon, that just wouldn’t work out too well. So I buried myself in the middle of the start corral and paced with my friend John, who had a similar goal. We enjoyed the cheering crowd and race atmosphere and relaxed. We came through the first mile around 6:38. Perfect.
The crowd and excitement did not let up the next mile at all, and we cruised through 2 miles in around 13:06. After 2 miles, the course straightened out and did not have as many hairpin turns. Our first 5k was right on pace at 20:10. Originally, I planned to hit right around 20:00 per 5k or slightly under to hit my goal of 2:46-2:48. I started to break away from the pacing groups and my friend, and I pushed forward to 31:55 for 5 miles and 39:49 for my first 10k split. Right on pace.
10k to Half Marathon:
My point of most concern happened around 8 miles into the race. I already was feeling very flat and a bit tight in my right quad, which had been giving me problems all week. I was not sure how I would handle the remaining miles if it tensed up even more, and my energy already felt like it was sliding. Crap. I wasn’t even one hour in yet. But right around 8.5 or so, John caught back up to me and the crowd started filling up again. We were both wearing Big 10 college jerseys, so a lot of people were screaming out to us. The crowd support and having someone to pace with was exactly what I needed. I managed to pick up the pace again and relax. We passed 10 miles together in 1:03:49 and were feeling smooth.
Our second 10k was 39:56. From there, we both picked up the pace. We were amazingly consistent the first 20k. But at the halfway point, the crowd was probably the biggest and loudest. We passed the half marathon mark in 1:24:03 and dropped from 6:26 miles down to 6:10-6:16.
Half Marathon to 18.6 miles (30k):
The next 10k was the fastest of my race. John and I dropped down our pace quite quickly from the half and started pushing the pace. I was feeling great after finally loosening up and started really dropping the pace, down to 6:03 for mile 17. I was effortlessly cruising past tons of people that had gone out too fast, or were holding the same pace as before. I also dropped John in the process, and I was confidently rolling along. My 3rd 10k split was a 38:50 or so, a 6:16 average over those 6.2 miles. That was almost as fast as a 10k I ran in August, which was only 6.2 miles.
It’s hard to say that I should have done things differently on this 10k, mostly because I felt much stronger than I did at any other point in the race. I still managed to take my energy gels and fluids, and I had no other problems to think off. Just clipping off the miles.
30K to 22 miles:
The next 3.5 miles was the first real problem that I had all day. I glanced down at my watch to check out what I would be hitting for my 20th mile, and I saw that my watch said 2:04. I was amazed at first. I did not think I was moving that fast, since I would have had to have run a 1:00 flat 10 mile on top of the first 10 mile to hit that time. Something didn’t add up. When I looked closer, my watch had frozen at 19.6 miles. I played around with it a bit, but no luck. Crap.
For whatever reason, that really got into my head. I was completely at the mercy of crowd support to keep my pace up since I no longer had any reassurance from seeing the miles still coming smoothly. The problem was, the crowd almost disappeared for a mile or two. Unfortunately, my pace suffered and I started to tense up again. My next 5k went from 19:30′s to 20:45, a 6:42 pace. And while I definitely didn’t “hit the wall” from miles 19-22, my pace dropped back to 6:45′s.
22 – 24.5:
For this 2.5 mile stretch, I really stopped focusing on anything other than getting fluids. My legs started really tensing up and it kept me from keeping a fluid stride. Also, there were a few dark passes under bridges, which for whatever reason gave my sight some issues. It’s as if I was slowly losing my depth perception a bit. That is when it really dawned on me: I was about to hit “the wall.”
24.5 – 26:
Enter “the wall.” I grabbed every cup of water I could, but nothing really helped. My pace dropped from 6:40′s. Since my watch had died, I had no idea what pace I was hitting at all. I thought I was barely scraping 8:00 miles, so I started to get pretty disappointed. I lost focus on the crowd support, and John caught up to me and breezed right past. Seeing as how he has done a few more marathons than me, I’m sure he knew better than to hammer the 3rd 10k like I did. Oh well, it was a good learning experience.
I kept looking at the clock to try to remember my time at each mile so that I could later see where I had gone wrong. At one point, I thought I added up a mile split to a 9:30 mile. In actuality, I never actually went slower than around 7:15, but I didn’t know that at the time. On top of that, my hearing started to get muffled and I had some tunnel vision going, so I slowed down even more to where I thought I was just shuffling along. When I saw the One Mile to Go sign at 25.2, I just gritted my teeth and buckled down hard. That was the longest mile I have ever run! My last 5k was a 22:03, which is where I put on the majority of the time over my goal.
26 – Finish:
I’m sure the crowd was going crazy, but I could hardly hear them. I glanced up to see a huge TV projection of the runners, and I did manage to notice that I was holding decent form. No way, I thought. Even friends that were watching said that I kept solid form even at the very end, which is always a good sign. The last 400 yards starts with a 200 yard uphill, which I definitely felt like I was crawling up. Then there was a quick turn and the finish was only 100 yards away. It was such a welcome sight, and was even slightly downhill. I crossed officially as #390 at 2:51:21, which was good for an average pace of 6:32 per mile.
I certainly learned a lot about running and marathon running with this race. I also realize little ways that I can tweak my own training a bit. I think I may have over-tapered slightly, since I never really built up any solid mileage after the half marathon a few weeks ago. But, I’m sure I can look into that in more detail for another buildup in the not-so-distant future. I am very satisfied with this race, and it was a great learning experience. I have a lot of room to improve in the future as well. But for now, I am going to take some substantial time off from running to recover both physically and mentally.