The Deep Dish on My Chicago Marathon

The Chicago Marathon race weekend was a great weekend overall. Meeting, hanging out and running with new and old running friends was great. Spending time in a city like Chicago with it’s great food and sights reminded me why I have always liked visiting there. And I couldn’t really ask for better weather for most of the weekend.

There was just one problem – the race itself.

The main reason that I was there in the first place.

While my confidence in the lead up to the race ebbed and flowed throughout most of the summer, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that ever since I got a lottery place for the race, I didn’t really want to be here.

I didn’t want to start a training plan in the middle of summer.

I didn’t want to go through the most difficult parts of training in the heat and humidity of it either.

Shoot, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to train for or run another marathon ever again.

It was even to the point where I considered withdrawing from the race once or twice during the summer.

But the thought that kept coming back to me was that I had a place in one of the World Major Marathons and I couldn’t possibly pass up that chance. A chance that so many other runners around the world would jump at with little or no hesitancy.

So I continued to train and tried to stay positive even during some particularly tough workouts. And, with race day approaching, I gained back some confidence with the help of my coach and his updated training plan. The confidence I gained wasn’t towards a particular time or goal, but just that I could go to Chicago and complete the race in a decent time.

I genuinely enjoyed a lot of the training runs and workouts during the plan. But once it became clear that my goal from the beginning of the plan (sub-3:20) was no longer in play, the race felt much less important. And while I was confident that I could still have a decent or even a good race, I questioned what my fight would be like if I fell off the pace in the later stages of the race.

When I gave a breakdown of my race plan in my last post, I did it with neither confidence nor any real excitement. (Believe me, I just re-read it!)

And when people wished me well or asked how I was feeling in the days before the race or when coach said he thought the race would go well for me, I did everything I could to lower or even eliminate expectations.

I only shared some of this with one or two people, so to anyone else reading all of this might come as a surprise.

This is the point where you might expect to hear about the beginning of the comeback and how I ended up running my dream race.

Spoiler alert: that’s not what happened.

Here I was about to run the biggest race I’d ever taken part in and I felt…indifferent.

I didn’t really care what my time was going to be. I just wanted to start the race, see what happened, hopefully do some justice to the months of training I had done and, ultimately, just get through it.

The big race atmosphere did very little to increase my motivation for the race.

Just to be clear, in the moment, I could realize that the atmosphere was great, but it just didn’t give me an extra boost as race day got underway.

As I walked from my hotel to Grant Park around 5:30am, did my warmup and waited in the starting area, I wasn’t nervous at all. This is probably something that should have alerted me to a tough day ahead. I’m almost always at least slightly nervous before any race no matter the distance.

So, I’m sure you’re wondering what actually happened in the race.

With a goal of 3:30, the plan for the race was easy to remember – 25 minutes for each 5km. As long as I could stick to that, I would position myself to do pretty well in the race.

There were plenty of runners around (at the start and all throughout the race), but there was more than enough room to get into a good rhythm, which I did pretty quickly. Even with a quick stop to pee after 5k, I was still maintaining a good average pace and felt good enough to think I could come close to my goal.

I maintained a good rhythm with the help of some great crowds leading up to the half marathon point, where the crowds were probably the best I’ve ever experienced. And with a little bit of an adrenaline boost from those crowds, I continued strongly for a few more kms/miles.

Then my legs began to get really heavy.

And when that happened, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I fell off the pace and walked/jogged the rest of the way. At about the 30km/18-19 mile mark, I slowed to a walk and, from there until the finish, it was really tough going.

I knew that I had to keep moving forward though, so I decided to walk for 30 seconds and run for 5 minutes. After a couple of those, it became walk one minute and run for 5 minutes. And so on, until I was walking for a few minutes and running for as long as I could.

Finally, mercifully, I got to the last mile, and then the last couple of turns and the finish line was in sight.

As I crossed the finish line in 4:03.57, the only feeling that I remember was relief. Relief that it was finally over and I could now enjoy the rest of my time in Chicago.

Like I said at the beginning, overall it was a great weekend. All of the memories of the weekend are good ones.

And, honestly, I don’t really remember too much from the race, except for the one guy that encouraged me to start running again with about a mile left. So I don’t even consider the race a bad memory.

Sometimes the problem with sharing your goals publicly, is coming up well short of them.

It’s certainly not the first time that’s happened for me and, as much as I hope I’m wrong, it probably won’t be the last time either.

None of that was really on my mind during or after the race though because I still wanted to make sure I enjoyed the weekend as much as I could.

In many ways, the race was a microcosm of the training plan as a whole. As I explained to a friend in the week after the race, I almost had an empty feeling during the race. An underlying feeling of inevitably not reaching the pre-race goal of 3:30.

Sometimes, you think things into reality.

Is that what happened to me in Chicago? Maybe, maybe not.

But all of this being said, I don’t really have any regrets.

I had no way of knowing exactly how I would feel during the race. Of course, I wish that the race would have gone a little bit better but I’m also really happy to have completed my 12th marathon. And if someone would have told me a few years ago that I’d be disappointed or not completely satisfied with finishing the Chicago Marathon in just over 4 hours, I don’t think I would have believed them!

So, as I try to put this race behind me, I’m looking forward to a few things in the next couple of months. One of them involves going back to running every day, which I will explain more in one of my next posts. I’ve also got a couple of races lined up, which right now are just to keep a target in front of me. As I get closer to these races, I’ll decide what my goals are for them.

As always, thanks for reading! And if you’ve made it this far, thanks to everyone for the support especially through the summer months – you all know who you are!