It turns out that Jeff, or John or whatever his name was may have been right! Back in El Burgo Ranero a well meaning man gave me a lecture on why walking the Camino was not suitable training for a marathon. He happily carried on explaining what I should be doing even when we had established that I had run 50+ marathons in the past and that he had never run a marathon. I always knew today would be hard work - or should I say harder work than normal, but the opportunity to walk the Camino had to be taken and I would just have to do my best!
We’ve had a lovely couple of days in Chicano. A city I’ve never been to before, We have had wonderful weather which has made a huge difference - walking around in grey drizzle would have been a different story. As it was, we have eaten lunch and dinner sitting outside in glorious sunshine. We braved the subway and buses to get around the city if we didn’t fancy walking and had a couple of days of being tourists before getting an early night on Saturday. Jet lag meant that I was easily able to fall asleep before 9pm and I woke up before the alarm went off at 5am!
This marathon started early. London, Berlin and Boston started at 10am (if I recall correctly), Chicago starts at 7.30am! Thankfully our hotel was near the start, so we joined the throng of runners making their way to Grant Park for the start. The park was busy! I guess London has three start areas, Boston has buses to the start that mean you arrive just in time, Berlin (I think) had bigger gaps between the starting waves, but Chicago has 3 waves starting at half hour intervals so the park was very busy. It was a little difficult so see where I needed to go due to the throngs of people, and Husbando and I needed to drop our bags in different places before making our way to our different start areas.
It was pleasantly warm at the start. So much so that I didn’t need the extra layer I’d brought with me so I dumped it in a charity bin as I entered my starting pen. Then it was just a case of waiting for the start - while listening to the conversations going on around me and trying to work out what my ‘race plan’ should be.
I thought I might do a run/walk thing, where I would run 9mins and walk for 1min but that I would run the first 5km in order to get out of the congestion at the start. After the singing of the national anthem and the start of the first wave it was our turn to go. For once in my life I didn’t go off too fast, I knew that this was going to be a tough day, so didn’t want to cause myself more discomfort than absolutely necessary. I got to 5k, crossing some of Chicago’s iconic moveable bridges (some of which we had seen raising and lowering the previous day) and had a little chat with myself about the ‘race plan.’ I was feeling OK and by that I mean my shins hurt but not unbearably so, so I would carry on running to 10k and reassess.
The aid stations were frequent, 20 of them on the course, all with Gatorade, water and toilets which was just as well as I needed 2 loo stops on the way (jet lag is not helpful when it comes to pre race prep). Before we’d left the hotel in the morning the local news had run a piece on replacing Chicago’s lead water pipes. Apparently millions of homes and businesses still have lead piping and there is a drive to get them replaced. I drank the water at the aid stations - crossing my fingers that it was bottled water and that it wouldn’t make me more mad than I already am!
At 10k I thought that I’d carry on to the halfway mark before walking. We were running mainly on city streets, with the exception of a lovely interlude running through Lincoln Park, but the support from the locals was amazing and constant. Plus each neighbourhood seemed to have quite a distinct character - in Chinatown the dragons came out to cheer us all on.
Halfway in and after 2hrs 8mins of running, I thought that, as I have another marathon in two weeks, I would treat this as my last long run. According to Rundot my last long run should be 2hrs 45mins. I was going to add 5minutes to that to allow for the toilet stops. In the event I ran a bit longer - to the 30k marker before admitting to myself that my shins were no longer ‘just a bit achey’ but actually ‘properly painful’ now!
I ran walked the rest of the way. More running than walking, but I was no the only walker - I haven’t seen that many walkers in a road marathon before. Maybe it was because I was nearer the back of the pack than normal, maybe the surprisingly warm conditions were sapping everyone’s energy (when we got a headwind it was almost a relief as it cooled everyone down), but it felt as though about half the people around me were walking.
The mile and kilometre markers were not as obvious as the ones at London - and I missed several. What I did like was the fact that rather than a 25mile marker and a 28 mile marker there was a ‘1 mile to go’ marker. This was followed by an 800m (2 laps round the track) marker and from 400m there was a marker every 100m. There was also the only ‘hill’ of the course between 400 and 300m!
I crossed the line about an hour slower than I had hopped for when I booked this marathon, and about an hour faster than I thought I was probably on for when I started out in the morning, I also decided that marathons are stupid and swore, loudly, when I remembered the marathon I have in two weeks and the fact that I have booked Paris marathon for April!
The crowded conditions continued after the finish, but the volunteers were amazing. We were given our medals, a bottle of water (cute, reusable, metal bottle), space blankets and proceeded down a line of refreshments. Beer (none of your Berlin alcohol free stuff here), banana, apple, Stan’s Donut, biscuits, Maurten bar and probably something else that I’ve forgotten about.
In the sunshine, Grant Park felt like one massive post race party (there was an official finish party but I didn’t go), with runners using their space blankets to sit on while they relaxed after their endeavours. I hobbled to the gear check tent to grab my bag and then on to meet Husbando, who had finished much earlier than me and was waiting in the Hare AC pop up post race lounge. We then hobbled back to the hotel for showers before going out (we walked there - don’t ask me why!) for the best burger I have had in a very long time at Small Cheval - I also don’t want to know why the place is called Small Horse! Oh, and then, because we could, we had ice cream!
So that is the fourth of the six ‘Marathon Majors’ completed, I am not sure that I really want to do the last two. Tokyo is a nightmare to get into and a very long way to go if I can’t get extended time off work (which is tricky as a teacher). And I am not a huge fan of New York. We shall see.
