Race Report: Chicago Marathon, October 8, 2023
I know the Chicago Marathon is covered so much in social media, a lot of this will be redundant. But I'll tell my story anyway.
General race impressions: This was absolutely the best race experience I have ever had. All 26.2 miles were just wall to wall people screaming encouragement at you the entire time. You really felt like you were part of something. I've never run a world major marathon before so maybe it's the same at all of them, but it was just such a big, well-run race. The expo was full of exhibitors, the race shirt was high quality, it was easy to navigate, all of it.
Race day was a little stressful getting there, because I didn't know the city at all. This was the only part that I personally thought was lacking. The participant guide said to take public transportation, but a little more detailed information about which lines or which stop to take, depending on your gate to the start area, would have been helpful. I got off at Harrison because I was starting toward the back, but most people got off at the stop before mine, and when I emerged onto the street, it was still dark and I had no idea where I was. So I was standing there looking at Google Maps on my phone trying to get my bearings. Some signage or a few volunteers at each stop near there would have gone a long way. My family had a hard time figuring out how to get to the runner reunion area also, there were no signs in the area. Maybe we are just spoiled by runDisney.
Course was amazing, largely because the city is just so impressive. I haven't visited Chicago in over 20 years, and at that time I was living in NYC so it just didn't register for me how big and world-class this city is. Coming back now, it was a different experience. We took the architectural river tour which made it that much better in the race, because I knew what a lot of the buildings were. I love Philadelphia races but this really made Philly feel like a small town, and our marathon a little rinky-dink
I still love Philly but wow this was nice.
They played the Bulls intro music at the start and it occurred to me, this must be like the Rocky music at every event in Philadelphia: a must-play at every start line. Just guessing.
My specific race experience: I've complained on here enough that most people know I had an IT band flare up in my hip that practically erased my peak period of training. I've been nursing it with run/walk/run of various intervals for the past month, building up to 7:30 run/ 0:30 walk. The pain had mostly gone away but came back on my longest runs. Going into the race, I figured I had a 25% chance that it would get bad on-course and I'd have to drop out, a 50% chance that it would flare up and I'd have pain at some point, but I would still finish, and a 25% chance it would be fine.
I decided not to do intervals, per se, at the race, but take a drink at every single water stop and walk to drink. That would be every 1-2 miles and allow me to make sure I'm hydrated. I normally stop every 4 miles or so, and I don't think that has been enough fluids for me. This worked out very well actually and I felt well-fueled the whole time. Not to mention the fact we had very good meals in Chicago leading up to the race.
I was determined not to be drawn into going for any kind of time goal, given my injury. I have half marathons lined up every 6 weeks for the next few months, including
Disneyland and Princess, and I didn't want to blow my chances at finishing those by going too crazy here. So I timed my race with my Garmin, but set the watch face to just show time of day. No information about my pace so I don't get in my head. I did hit the lap button at mile markers so I had a general idea of how I was doing every mile, but no info in the moment.
Going along, I had no pain, and at Mile 10 I started thinking to myself, If I can get to Mile 16 before the pain flares up, I can limp in the next 10 miles. Then at mile 16 I thought, if I can get to Mile 18 before the pain flares up, I can limp it in. Than at Mile 18 I thought, ok, just get to 20. 20 miles, no pain. Finally between Mile 20 and 21, I started feeling pain, but it was actually just the other leg, the quad cramping up. Probably due to undertraining generally. So I decided I'll start doing intervals. I started out at 6:30/0:30, but the pain got too bad so I moved to 4:30/0:30, then when that got too bad I went to 2:30/0:30 until the finish. My IT issue never wound up acting up though, so I'm feeling good about that.
My finish time wound up being 4:53:54, which is only 7 minutes off of my PR 2 years ago, when I had a perfect training cycle. I was on track to PR, actually, up until Mile 20 when my quad started acting up, and that was with inserting a lot more walk/drink breaks than usual. I don't know what that means about my current fitness but I'm just happy that I was able to finish at all, let alone another sub-5 hour finish.
I say I'm not going to sign up for many more marathons, but dang this was a good one and I might enter the lottery again. And Chicago was such a great city to visit. Yes, yes, I know I've been complaining about training through the summer, but the weather was perfect race day and maybe that makes up for it!
