I set the goal of running this race after the spring "season" I had. After Swarthmore, I didn't know what direction I wanted to go for the fall. I knew I wanted to race the Philly RNR half, but besides that I wasn't sure. I was in danger of falling into the same old patterns and routines as other years. I was talking about this with my roommate Dan Feeney and he suggested I look at fall marathons. My knee-jerk reaction "hell no," because I felt that I wasn't in good enough shape and didn't have enough fitness to consider a big jump to that distance. After I thought about it, I reconsidered. I decided on Chicago because it is a fast course at a good time of the year for marathons. Furthermore, after sitting down and considering how much time I should give myself to prepare, Chicago seemed to be the best choice. Philly was a bit too far away to stay focused, and anything earlier would have been too close. It also fell 3 weeks after the half marathon that I already planned on doing, making the half an excellent prep race.
My training went well all summer, except for the typical East Coast heat and humidity slowing the times down. I'll discuss this more later, but this probably had more of an negative effect on the workouts than had I been training for something shorter. Besides that, I stayed away from any injury worries and was able to train about as well as I could expect considering work.
I began summer training aiming for Chicago, of course, but without a clear indication of any time goals to set. Since I needed some sort of target to hit to base my workouts off of, I started with the goal of a 2:24 (~5:30 pace). I figured this would be a solid, conservative goal that I could always change as I got fitter and closer to race time, and had better indications of where I was at.
Moving into the late summer, I adjusted the time goal from a conservative 2:24 to a more optimistic 2:20 (~5:20 pace). I like round numbers so that the math is easier within workouts and races. As the weather started to improve and I got in better shape, I was able to get closer to 5:20 than 5:30s in workouts.
My prep races didn't go that well because I ran slower than I ran in them last year. In the back of my mind, I knew the weather was much worse for both (summer hung around) and I was focusing on marathon-based work than the half marathon focus I had last fall. The slower times didn't really affect my confidence, but it would have been nicer to run faster.
Come marathon weekend, I was feeling great from a solid taper and not over training in the last month. The weather was ideal and my girlfriend Emily's sister Angela, who lives in Chicago, was an awesome tour guide. I was able to keep my mind off the race and enjoy myself during the weekend.
Race day morning I made it to the tent at 6:50 without incident. I figured this would give me plenty of time, since the race info made it clear that we were to get to our corrals by 7:15, and it's not like I wanted to do a long warmup before a marathon. Of course, as soon as I got to the tent, the guy in charge said that we were heading over at 7:00. Thus I jogged 5 minutes around the tent city and hurried into my racing gear.
So there we were, in the corral 25 minutes early and we passed the time standing around, shivering, talking and surreptitiously peeing. The gun went off and the first five miles went by in a blur. I felt great, as I should have, and I was mostly focused on getting into a good rhythm, not going out too fast, and saving as much energy as possible by running economically and drafting off others. I momentarily considered running with the top women (Jeptoo ran 2:18:57 the year before) but I was running 2:20 pace and they were nowhere to be seen. I decided to stick to the pace I had thought of before (~1:10 at halfway was the goal) and on the way to that pace, see who I could work together with.
The pace was very easy through about 8 miles. Then we turned south, into the wind, which was a big annoyance for certain stretches. Afterwards, reading the writeups, all anyone talked about was how the wind slowed down the times. Personally I didn't think it had a huge impact, but that's also because it was early in the race when I was relatively fresh.
I started to feel the pace around this time as well. Not that it was getting hard, just that it was less than effortless like it was for the first could miles. Through about 15k I was right on pace, then I slipped a little and had to overcorrect through halfway. This is when I had to start focusing a little harder; the crowds of spectators were thinning out, company was gone and the grind was slowly becoming more and more tiring.
Mentally, I broke the race into chunks. "Get through the first 10, get through half, get through 15, get through 30k, get through 20, get through 35k, get through 40k, just finish" was how my internal monologue generally went, with mile markers sprinkled throughout as needed. The most challenging thing to me was that I was effectively alone after about halfway. Occasionally I would pass someone blowing up, but they provided no help and as far as pacing and drafting went I had nothing. Just me following the blue dashed line that marked the shortest possible route.
Somewhere between 15 miles and 30k, it became a real race effort. I say "somewhere between" because, for me, there was no "wall" that I hit. It was a slow, steady progressive grind that just got harder and harder to maintain. You can see how my splits inexorably slipped slower after halfway as the effort increased:
| Split | Time Of Day | Time | Diff | min/mile | miles/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05K | 07:46:44AM | 00:16:42 | 16:42 | 05:23 | 11.17 |
| 10K | 08:03:09AM | 00:33:08 | 16:26 | 05:18 | 11.35 |
| 15K | 08:20:04AM | 00:50:03 | 16:55 | 05:27 | 11.02 |
| 20K | 08:37:11AM | 01:07:09 | 17:06 | 05:31 | 10.89 |
| HALF | 08:40:44AM | 01:10:43 | 03:34 | 05:14 | 11.49 |
| 25K | 08:53:52AM | 01:23:51 | 13:08 | 05:25 | 11.08 |
| 30K | 09:10:54AM | 01:40:52 | 17:01 | 05:29 | 10.96 |
| 35K | 09:28:10AM | 01:58:08 | 17:16 | 05:34 | 10.80 |
| 40K | 09:45:30AM | 02:15:29 | 17:21 | 05:35 | 10.75 |
| Finish | 09:52:51AM | 02:22:50 | 07:21 | 05:24 | 11.14 |
My hamstrings and glutes got more and more tired and closer and closer to cramping as the race wore on. Maintaining the effort and focusing on the run fatigued me mentally, and in tandem with my legs, so that my total fatigue was mounting my willpower to keep driving was slipping. The hardest part of the race was probably the last long straight stretch. From mile ~23.25 to just before mile 26 is a straight stretch of road, but with an "S" bend at the end so that you can't see the finish and aren't sure how much farther to go. I hit the 26 mile mark (on a bridge, no less) and if it had been any other race I would have been able to outkick the guy just ahead but I was mentally and physically maxed out. I finished up and just kept walking through the finish area.
The finish is cruelly located about 0.3 miles away from the tent city near the start, so it was a long, painful walk with 6" steps through the beer garden, the goodies bags, the mountains of bananas and water bottles back to meet up with Angela. Meeting up was easy and we slowly got back to my stuff. After much whining I eventually got a free massage (better than nothing) and a slower-than-usual bus trip back to her place to recover all day (no nap, too tired to sleep) before heading to the airport and home.
I got back home at 1 am. I woke up just after 5 am (Chicago time). All told, I had been awake for almost 20 hours, complete with an all-out marathon. What a day. On the whole I thought I had a pretty good marathon debut. I didn't run what I wanted, but that was a rough goal anyway and it would have been exceedingly arrogant and presumptuous to set a serious time goal for a first marathon. I was just happy to not positive split too much, especially compared to some of the other guys that I was with at 10 miles. Now I need to sit down and plan out what I want to aim for thru the spring.
As far as more marathons go, I believe that with 1 under my belt I can definitely improve. I don't want to rush it and do another one in the spring, maybe next fall I'll plan out a second try. Until then, I won't even think about it and I'll stay occupied with the next 6 months. I don't want to get stuck on any one distance, so I think I want to go back to the track and try the 5k/10k again. I've never run a good 10k and I haven't run a good 5k since 2012, so I'm overdue for that.
So that's my next task in running: make some plans. I'll put them up here once I do.
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