Chicago Marathon

Yesterday’s marathon was, hands down, the best run of my life. I can’t even put into words how good it felt out there. For those of you who didn’t see my ecstatic Facebook post, I finished up the 26.2 in 3:05:14 and hit 74.7 miles for the week — my most ever by a bunch. Just as exciting as the fact that I BQ’ed and almost PR’ed on a training run was the fact that I ran over a 5 minute negative split. Seriously. Me, the king of the mid-race burnout ran a huge negative split in a marathon. Crazy. Here’s how it happened:

I flew into Chicago Saturday morning, took the train down to the expo, cabbed it back to the hotel, and then laced up the running shoes for a quick run along Lake Michigan. It was real chilly and I got a few comments about how crazy I was for running in shorts, but the scenery was beautiful and I finished up 5.3 miles nice and slow. After a quick shower, I went out and found some beer and pasta, then stopped by a CVS for some supplies. The only Epsom salt they had was a huge bag, but I wasn’t about to break tradition, so I bought it. Back at the hotel, I took the saltiest hot bath ever (I figured I might as well use the whole bag since I wasn’t going to carry the leftovers back to NYC), got all my gear set up for in the morning and then laid down for a little nap. This was just before 6:00 in the evening.

Next thing I know, my alarm’s going off. 5:30. Holy crap! Did I just sleep eleven-and-a-half hours? I got up, ate a Power Bar, drank some Gatorade and threw on my running shorts before realizing that it was actually only 4:30 and my cell phone was still on Eastern Time. I went back to sleep for about a half hour, then got up for real.

Getting to Corral A was bizarre. There were about ten different checkpoints I had to go through, showing my bib. At each point, there were fewer and fewer people allowed to pass on. When I finally got in, I found that we had our own private Porta Potties. Sweet! I’m VIP. I felt a little like a fraud for being up there though. Looking around, I could tell that everyone was in great shape and about to run super fast. Me, on the other hand, I was going to be running a 3:30:00. I thought about moving back to one of the other corrals, but wasn’t sure if it would even be possible. Instead, I lined up at the very back of mine and on the far left side.

Finally, 7:30 came and we were off. It was almost 45 seconds before I crossed the start line, but I was very relaxed and didn’t mind. The crowd there was unbelievably loud and amazing. I was getting enveloped by people passing me on both sides and, again, felt a little bad about being so far up there, but kept the brakes on and ran slowly, as planned. I hit mile 1 at 7:30, miles 2 and 3 were about the same, maybe even a little slower (my Garmin was acting up early on, so I don’t have reliable splits until later).

As we started to warm up, I couldn’t help speeding up a little bit, but I still was forcibly applying the brakes, trying to keep slow and steady. Around mile 4, I suddenly had to pee really, really bad. I decided to hold it in, hoping it would go away. Focusing on that made it harder to concentrate on pace and I sped up a little more. I was still in the low 7:00s until around mile 8, though.

Then, this pain in my left knee started up and I felt like it was because of my choppy stride, so I started taking longer steps. That inadvertently sped me up, but I was feeling good, so I kept with it. I took the first of my gels at mile 10, and was feeling great.

I didn’t really realize how far off plan I was until we got to the half. I looked up and saw 1:36:something and realized I was running way faster than I should be. But, after doing a little mental checklist of how all the different parts were feeling, I realized that I could keep this pace up for another 13. Maybe a mile or so later, I caught the 3:10 pace groups. I hung with them for a bit, but the crowd was annoying and so I decided to pass them and move up about mile 15.

I was feeling good, cruising along, starting to pass people. At mile 20, I had my second gel, got a great burst of energy from it, and realized there was no reason to hold anything back at this point. There were only 6.2 miles left, so I could open up and run my heart out. And that’s exactly what I did. Starting with mile 20, my splits were 6:46, 6:41, 6:30, 6:34, 6:39. I overshot a little and had to slow down to 6:55 and 7:01 the last two before sprinting into the finish the last 0.2.

Looking up at the clock and seeing 3:05-and-change was an amazing moment. It didn’t even seem real, it was just too good to be true. I picked up my medal, posed for a quick photo, got the chip off my shoe, then started running (literally) to the bathroom — I had had to pee so bad for the last twenty miles and it was pretty much the only thing on my mind at this point. One of the volunteers started laughing at me asking if I was going to go back and run it again. I laughed and said maybe.

I drank my free beer, but couldn’t stomach any of the food. I went back to the hotel for a shower and nap before re-emerging to explore the city a bit and get some food. I ended up in a dive bar in the north loop, watching football and drinking beers with the locals all day. They laughed at me when I told them I’d just run the marathon and said, What’d you do that for?

I smiled and said, Why not?

p.s. I know this is long already but I have to point out one more thing — Last week, I was really worried because of a 1:31:18 half marathon I ran. I’m happy to report that that was just a fluke. Yesterday, I ran the second half of the marathon in 1:29:47 — a minute and a half faster than Grete’s Gallop! What a difference a week, some solid rest, and good weather can make…